Personalization is what happens in threaded systems. In threaded systems the number of viewers and participants in any given thread extremely rapidly approaches

Personalization is what happens in threaded systems. In threaded systems the number of viewers and participants in any given thread extremely rapidly approaches 2, then 1, then 0. Your analog of how problems are solved has nothing to do with the reality of how threaded systems work. In reality it would be: 1. -> 1.1 -> 1.2 -> 1.1 -> Airplanes 1. 1. -> 1.1 -> 1 -> 1.1 -> 1 1. -> 1.1 7. Hotdog -> Apples -> Hotdogs -> Apples -> Hotdogs -> Apples -> Hotdogs 1. 1. -> 1.1 Descartes -> Nietsche -> Russell 1. -> 1.1 It's the key problem. When people isolate themselves from everybody else, there's no real progression in the discussion. On HN I can't even find new posts if I wanted to! When I last posted, 15 hours ago, I mentioned there were 86 posts made. That did not include mine. There are now a total of 89. So including yours that means one solitary other individual has since posted in this thread. I wished to locate his post to see where he fit in our little discussion, but alas that's not really practical in this model of discussion. The reason posts die rapidly is because there is no notion of chronology. When you look at a post from 3 days ago you're mostly just going to find comments from 3 days ago. Now go to literally any reasonable size chronologically ordered forum and you'll find interesting topics that in many cases have been actively going for years, and it's phenomenally interesting to be able to clearly see and follow the changing views, discoveries, and so on over time. Like you're inadvertently alluding to, I think this format is more popular in large part because it's a minimal effort, rapid response game. It's certainly fun and addicting, but I think it has a very negative effect on the overall level of content.