I think you're talking about two different things at the same time.

The setting you're talking about now was to expand replies to all the comments. That has nothing to do with featured comments, so that's where you confused me.

You are correct that now there is no way to leave replies expanded, but I don't want that anyway. If I see a comment that I think needs following up and I see there's already a reply, I'll expand it, otherwise it clutters things up and has the potential to break conversations like I said happens at Engadget.