It's hard to know what specifically you're referring to, but to the extent that I understand your questions, the answer is that things have worked that way for many years, certainly before I started moderating in 2012.

There was no need to post all those sibling comments; I didn't reply sooner because I simply hadn't seen this yet. That's one reason why the site guidelines ask you to email [email protected] instead of posting like this in the threads.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html