6 ms·

Slightly OT; but I wish reddit would use traditional forum style replies to push threads up, instead of the positive feedback loop of votes with opinions that a

Slightly OT; but I wish reddit would use traditional forum style replies to push threads up, instead of the positive feedback loop of votes with opinions that agree with majority getting upvotes giving views which give proportionally more upvotes

rjaco31 9y ago
It might be conceivable on smaller subreddits, but on the big ones it would basically just drown everything into a sea of low-quality threads. I got the feeling that the vast majority of threads never ever make it to the "front page" of their subreddit.
- hellbanner 9y ago
  Hm good points..
- sotojuan 9y ago
  > but on the big ones it would basically just drown everything into a sea of low-quality threads The big subreddits' comment sections is largely low quality anyway. Traditional forums have their downsides (anyone remember super nested quote trains?), but I still find them superior to upvote + nested replies. The best forum UI for me, though, are imageboards. Too bad they are associated with a less than popular community.
johnfn 9y ago
Traditional forum style sorting just sorts for controversiality. Posts that generate heated discussion will continue to push their way to the top. This is okay but it means that non controversial stories will not make it to the top, which is honestly one of the largest benefits of news aggregator sites.
- wordupmaking 9y ago
  How about, here and on reddit, being able to mark threads you're interested in, and having a page where you can see those sorted by last reply. On HN, make that page refresh every 15 or 60 minutes or whatever. Heck, once every 24 hours would be enough... sometimes I just want to talk about the things that interest me, with the people that are interested in them. I would love to be able to think on something for a few days, or to familiarize myself with a subject before mouthing off. As they are now, reddit and HN are require you to be there when something is "current", and that's ultimately not that much better than TV. Yeah, sometimes you can get something out of it, but it's nowhere near as useful or deep. Even worse, there is a tendency to get semi- or unrelated stuff one out when something slightly similar is discussed, instead of putting things exactly where they "belong", where they add to a useful corpus. [which is exactly what I'm doing right now, and am doing too often.. but I honestly would prefer the alternative which doesn't exist yet] Just think about it, we have practically infinite storage, there's certainly plenty of expertise in reach of HN -- yet discussions get constantly restrained because our attention is limited. But it's limited because all we get are these flat lists, X items per page, next to no means to curate or organize anything. Imagine how much worse it would be without people who sometimes link to old but very relevant and insightful stories or individual comments. I'm very grateful to them, but to take them for granted, to rely on them for "structure" is totally stone age to me. Give us tools, give us transparency, let us figure out things even if they might be hard - stop trying to hand hold people you might underestimate! We don't need you as much as you need us.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    Actually, reddit has that. You can save threads or comments, and sort by latest.
    - simcop2387 9y ago
      And with reddit gold you can even have it hilight all new replies regardless of sort order. This can be really useful for viewing older discussions and see what's been added.
      - mercer 9y ago
        The RES browser extension does this without needing gold, or am I wrong about that?
        kuschku 9y ago
        It does not – with reddit gold, it highlights also all replies in the thread itself.
  - johnfn 9y ago
    I completely agree that a large problem with news aggregator sites is that you must be there right when the news hits. Eventually in the HN algo, time always dominates score and the discussion is killed no matter how interesting it was. To be honest, I think that a change in behavior needs to come from the website, top down, rather than allowing the community to opt in to an alternate scheme that will never hit the popularity threshold necessary to work. Like a sibling mentioned, Reddit has "newest", but because it's not on by default, no one bothers to use it. I don't think that it's our attention spans that cause our browsing behaviors on aggregator sites- I think it's purely derived from the Ui/Ux of the site, and that if the site kept interesting conversations up longer, people would participate and have more than the surface-level reflexive remarks we see here. This is not just a hypothesis - we can see the alternate behavior born out on forum sites. I think it's a huge shame that HN has opted for this model (especially when it wants to be "the better news aggregator"). Think how many great conversations never happened here because the algorithm prematurely killed the thread - due to lack of upvotes or something else.
ehsankia 9y ago
Sadly, none of those older methods scale to above a few thousand users. It very quickly devolves into a huge chaotic mess.

rjaco31 9y ago

It might be conceivable on smaller subreddits, but on the big ones it would basically just drown everything into a sea of low-quality threads. I got the feeling that the vast majority of threads never ever make it to the "front page" of their subreddit.

hellbanner 9y ago
Hm good points..
sotojuan 9y ago
> but on the big ones it would basically just drown everything into a sea of low-quality threads The big subreddits' comment sections is largely low quality anyway. Traditional forums have their downsides (anyone remember super nested quote trains?), but I still find them superior to upvote + nested replies. The best forum UI for me, though, are imageboards. Too bad they are associated with a less than popular community.

johnfn 9y ago

Traditional forum style sorting just sorts for controversiality. Posts that generate heated discussion will continue to push their way to the top. This is okay but it means that non controversial stories will not make it to the top, which is honestly one of the largest benefits of news aggregator sites.

wordupmaking 9y ago
How about, here and on reddit, being able to mark threads you're interested in, and having a page where you can see those sorted by last reply. On HN, make that page refresh every 15 or 60 minutes or whatever. Heck, once every 24 hours would be enough... sometimes I just want to talk about the things that interest me, with the people that are interested in them. I would love to be able to think on something for a few days, or to familiarize myself with a subject before mouthing off. As they are now, reddit and HN are require you to be there when something is "current", and that's ultimately not that much better than TV. Yeah, sometimes you can get something out of it, but it's nowhere near as useful or deep. Even worse, there is a tendency to get semi- or unrelated stuff one out when something slightly similar is discussed, instead of putting things exactly where they "belong", where they add to a useful corpus. [which is exactly what I'm doing right now, and am doing too often.. but I honestly would prefer the alternative which doesn't exist yet] Just think about it, we have practically infinite storage, there's certainly plenty of expertise in reach of HN -- yet discussions get constantly restrained because our attention is limited. But it's limited because all we get are these flat lists, X items per page, next to no means to curate or organize anything. Imagine how much worse it would be without people who sometimes link to old but very relevant and insightful stories or individual comments. I'm very grateful to them, but to take them for granted, to rely on them for "structure" is totally stone age to me. Give us tools, give us transparency, let us figure out things even if they might be hard - stop trying to hand hold people you might underestimate! We don't need you as much as you need us.
- kuschku 9y ago
  Actually, reddit has that. You can save threads or comments, and sort by latest.
  - simcop2387 9y ago
    And with reddit gold you can even have it hilight all new replies regardless of sort order. This can be really useful for viewing older discussions and see what's been added.
    - mercer 9y ago
      The RES browser extension does this without needing gold, or am I wrong about that?
      - kuschku 9y ago
        It does not – with reddit gold, it highlights also all replies in the thread itself.
- johnfn 9y ago
  I completely agree that a large problem with news aggregator sites is that you must be there right when the news hits. Eventually in the HN algo, time always dominates score and the discussion is killed no matter how interesting it was. To be honest, I think that a change in behavior needs to come from the website, top down, rather than allowing the community to opt in to an alternate scheme that will never hit the popularity threshold necessary to work. Like a sibling mentioned, Reddit has "newest", but because it's not on by default, no one bothers to use it. I don't think that it's our attention spans that cause our browsing behaviors on aggregator sites- I think it's purely derived from the Ui/Ux of the site, and that if the site kept interesting conversations up longer, people would participate and have more than the surface-level reflexive remarks we see here. This is not just a hypothesis - we can see the alternate behavior born out on forum sites. I think it's a huge shame that HN has opted for this model (especially when it wants to be "the better news aggregator"). Think how many great conversations never happened here because the algorithm prematurely killed the thread - due to lack of upvotes or something else.

ehsankia 9y ago

Sadly, none of those older methods scale to above a few thousand users. It very quickly devolves into a huge chaotic mess.