I can only concur with what appears to be the majority of comments with this change to working practice; and I, too, only registered simply to give feedback on this issue. The change is an absolute abomination. The inability to utilise autotext in 'conversations' is bugbear no. 1. Equally important (to me at least) is that it now appears impossible to use MathType equations to query authors in these new comment boxes. And I think another potential issue is the presence of that "Send" button right next to the "cancel/delete" button. I'll never, repeat NEVER, want to directly email/message my comments to the author(s), but I can see inadvertent sending of comments happening.
Bring back/allow user the choice on which comments to use!