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> With threaded discussion, if one subthread has gone off-topic, you can always collapse or kill that subthread. This is a social problem. I deliberately adde

> With threaded discussion, if one subthread has gone off-topic, you can always collapse or kill that subthread. This is a social problem. I deliberately added a disclaimer about the tendency for things to turn to crap if you tolerate it. I don't know what this is supposed to mean: > And your point doesn't always hold true. For example https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17 https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17

u801e 9y ago
>> And your point doesn't always hold true. For example https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17 https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17 > I don't know what this is supposed to mean What I linked to is an example of a discussion that didn't stay focused or tight despite the fact that it's not threaded.
- carussell 9y ago
  This makes no sense. 1. You shouldn't expect that it would "always hold true". I really don't know why you would, because I did not write that it would always hold true. In fact, what I did write is the opposite: a tacit acknowledgement that it's not a hard and fast guarantee. I mean, I specifically made comments like, "Like so many other things, this only works if you enforce it". It's right there. You can go back and read it. Thing is, I even edited my comment (before you read it and responded) from the original; I edited in the words "can help" so that it says "the unthreaded approach can help keep the discussion focused". You want to know something perverse? While doing this, I stopped and asked myself whether I was hedging too much—writing too defensively. Apparently the answer to that is a big nope; I was still not defensive enough. 2. Regardless of everything above, the page you linked to is supposed to prove what? It's a misdirected pull request, and the very first comment is a message to the requestor telling them so. I don't know what you expect past that; even after the message explaining that GitHub is not the correct place to make a pull request and that it will not be moving forward, you seem to be trying to score the discussion against a rubric of how effective the discussion was at staying focused. Do you not see what's wrong with that? 3. I made an a priori remark about how lousy the GitHub community is in my very first comment. I mean, my exact words were calling out what's found on GitHub as "pretty horrifying". If there's some way to be clearer regarding how I feel about GitHub, I don't know what it is. GitHub is terrible. And yet, despite this, despite everything above, your choice example is to link to a GitHub thread where this exact thing is on display, in an attempt to prove me wrong. Or something. I don't get it. This'll be my last comment here. I think I'm gonna go away for a while.
  - u801e 9y ago
    My reply wasn't meant to be disparaging in any way. It was to point out that your assertion that unthreaded discussions tend to be more focused and tight compared to threaded discussions isn't necessarily true. Regarding the example I cited. it's an unthreaded discussion that has been going on for several years and, if you bother to read through it, it's a mixture of troll comments along with some informative comments/discussion. Had it been a properly threaded discussion, it would have been much easier to follow the informative thread branches and filter out the uninformative ones (where the classification of what falls under one category or the other is up to the person reading it). But, because it's not threaded, you're effectively forced to wade through all the troll posts to find the informative comments (or miss the informative comments entirely if you're not willing to do that). The lack of threading did not change the "social aspect" of the discussion. It would have been the same either way given the topic, but one way of rendering it would have made it much easier to follow (and possibly spawned more informative discusson about the topic compared to what actually took place). Getting back to your points: > the very first comment is a message to the requestor telling them so. [...] after the message explaining that GitHub is not the correct place to make a pull request and that it will not be moving forward If your assertion about unthreaded discussions was true, then it should have ended soon after that comment (maybe after a couple of comments from the person who submitted the pull request after Linus' comment). That obviously wasn't the case and nothing kept it in check. > the unthreaded approach can help keep the discussion focused Based on what I've read online over the years (both threaded and non-threaded discussions), it doesn't seem to be the case. The only way I think this could be settled would be to come up with a representative sample of discussions under both formats and how well they stay on the original topic compared to each other. It would be interesting to see the results of such an analysis.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]

u801e 9y ago

>> And your point doesn't always hold true. For example https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17 https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17 > I don't know what this is supposed to mean What I linked to is an example of a discussion that didn't stay focused or tight despite the fact that it's not threaded.

carussell 9y ago
This makes no sense. 1. You shouldn't expect that it would "always hold true". I really don't know why you would, because I did not write that it would always hold true. In fact, what I did write is the opposite: a tacit acknowledgement that it's not a hard and fast guarantee. I mean, I specifically made comments like, "Like so many other things, this only works if you enforce it". It's right there. You can go back and read it. Thing is, I even edited my comment (before you read it and responded) from the original; I edited in the words "can help" so that it says "the unthreaded approach can help keep the discussion focused". You want to know something perverse? While doing this, I stopped and asked myself whether I was hedging too much—writing too defensively. Apparently the answer to that is a big nope; I was still not defensive enough. 2. Regardless of everything above, the page you linked to is supposed to prove what? It's a misdirected pull request, and the very first comment is a message to the requestor telling them so. I don't know what you expect past that; even after the message explaining that GitHub is not the correct place to make a pull request and that it will not be moving forward, you seem to be trying to score the discussion against a rubric of how effective the discussion was at staying focused. Do you not see what's wrong with that? 3. I made an a priori remark about how lousy the GitHub community is in my very first comment. I mean, my exact words were calling out what's found on GitHub as "pretty horrifying". If there's some way to be clearer regarding how I feel about GitHub, I don't know what it is. GitHub is terrible. And yet, despite this, despite everything above, your choice example is to link to a GitHub thread where this exact thing is on display, in an attempt to prove me wrong. Or something. I don't get it. This'll be my last comment here. I think I'm gonna go away for a while.
- u801e 9y ago
  My reply wasn't meant to be disparaging in any way. It was to point out that your assertion that unthreaded discussions tend to be more focused and tight compared to threaded discussions isn't necessarily true. Regarding the example I cited. it's an unthreaded discussion that has been going on for several years and, if you bother to read through it, it's a mixture of troll comments along with some informative comments/discussion. Had it been a properly threaded discussion, it would have been much easier to follow the informative thread branches and filter out the uninformative ones (where the classification of what falls under one category or the other is up to the person reading it). But, because it's not threaded, you're effectively forced to wade through all the troll posts to find the informative comments (or miss the informative comments entirely if you're not willing to do that). The lack of threading did not change the "social aspect" of the discussion. It would have been the same either way given the topic, but one way of rendering it would have made it much easier to follow (and possibly spawned more informative discusson about the topic compared to what actually took place). Getting back to your points: > the very first comment is a message to the requestor telling them so. [...] after the message explaining that GitHub is not the correct place to make a pull request and that it will not be moving forward If your assertion about unthreaded discussions was true, then it should have ended soon after that comment (maybe after a couple of comments from the person who submitted the pull request after Linus' comment). That obviously wasn't the case and nothing kept it in check. > the unthreaded approach can help keep the discussion focused Based on what I've read online over the years (both threaded and non-threaded discussions), it doesn't seem to be the case. The only way I think this could be settled would be to come up with a representative sample of discussions under both formats and how well they stay on the original topic compared to each other. It would be interesting to see the results of such an analysis.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]