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Maybe Talkyard is a bit different? It's new forum software, threaded, inspired by Hacker News: https://www.talkyard.io https://www.talkyard.io. (I'm developing

Maybe Talkyard is a bit different? It's new forum software, threaded, inspired by Hacker News: https://www.talkyard.io https://www.talkyard.io. (I'm developing it) With improvements over HN: https://www.talkyard.io/-32/how-hacker-news-can-be-improved-3-things https://www.talkyard.io/-32/how-hacker-news-can-be-improved-... Hmm I think threaded discussions, make the more sense, the more people join the discussion. If 999 people talk about something, they're going to split up into smaller groups, each group talking about a sub topic = thread. And everything laid out in a flat way = a huge mess. But if just 5 people talk about something — then they can stay focused on the same thing all of them. Flat = more ok.

RealityVoid 9y ago
I think that is a pretty cool project there. I like it but I don't know, do you get many people using it? I think there are quite a bit of forum platforms out there.
- KajMagnus 9y ago
  > do you get many people using it? No not yet. So far I've been focused on coding though (and I've learned that's the wrong way to get things done, I should instead start with validating the idea). But now a MVP is finished, and I'm shifting focus to marketing & PR. And one of the first steps, is ... to rename the project from EffectiveDiscussions to Talkyard. That's what I've been doing the past week, and ... the plan thereafter is to focus a bit on embedded comments for static site generators. There seems to be a slight vacuum here; Disqus isn't so popular any longer, it seems to me, among tech people = those who use static generators. > there are quite a bit of forum platforms out there Yes that's a problem for me. When I started this, in year 2010, there weren't. But I spent many years doing the wrong things, getting a job again & doing this on the spare time only ... and now suddenly there's Discourse, Flarum, Slack, Mattermost, Rocket Chat, Spot.IM, Discord, Matrix, and others. Maybe I was too slow. On the other hand, Talkyard is the only project with HackerNews topic types + chat features combined, so maybe it can find its niche.
b0rsuk 9y ago
Indentation depth is an issue for me, too. I would solve this differently: color coded post backgrounds (or similar indicators). Parent post = red indentation 1 = orange yellow, blue, green, brown, grey, black, white, etc. Then colors could cycle. I think it would make it easy at a glance to recognize which posts respond to what, after some initial getting used to. No clicking required and I think it's more intuitive. For colorblind users you could use SVG pattern backgrounds. In fact, it could be better for everyone, because you could have more patterns than visually distinct colors.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- KajMagnus 9y ago
  This is an interesting idea I think. Actually, on narrow screens, I don't use more than one or two indentation levels. Thereafter everything is flat — and instead of arrows, there're clickable "In reply to @username" text one can click and jump to the parent comment. Here, the color coding you describe, could maybe be helpful. When there is enough space for indendation, though, I'd prefer indenting. Otherwise, cannot visualize more than the first indentation depth, right. (Hmm not sure what you have in mind with "no clicking required" — Hacker News and Talkyard also don't require any clicking?)
  - b0rsuk 9y ago
    I don't mean colors instead of indentation, I mean in addition to. Indentation works well when there are very few replies and few indentation levels. But once there's a long debate, it becomes a well. Then when the well ends it's very hard to immediately tell what it's responding to. No clicking required - I mean clicking to jump to parent. That's introducing GOTOs to online discussion. If possible, I'd rather have a more intuitive way. Or maybe even something as blunt as printing the indentation level directly as a number!
    - KajMagnus 9y ago
      Aha, now I think I better understand what you mean. When coloring posts in the way you have in mind, then, to find the parent comment, one would look at the comments above, for a comment in a certain color? Then one won't need to rely so much on the indentation depth. Hmm that's an interesting idea. I'm a bit worried the resulting page would make use of too many colors — maybe a grayscale and patterns would be better (like you mentioned). One would, however, still need to click-and-jump, or scroll-manually, to find the parent, if one needs to reread it, and it's not on screen. I think the colors would mainly be useful on large screens, where one sees the parent comment without scrolling. On mobiles, I think click-to-jump-to-the-parent is more user friendly (rather than scrolling-scrolling-scrolling and scanning for a certain color).
b0rsuk 9y ago
After thinking about it a bit, one of main advantages of HN and reddit is to me very good signal to noise ratio. Screenshots of Talkyard seem to repeat those "socia" etc icons a lot. Most message boards are ugly in this aspect: they use more vertical space for displaying irrelevant user information and avatars, instead of focusing on content. A post 'td' or 'div' is always at least as high as the left box with avatar and user info. Posts with few words become very wasteful. I think it should be the opposite: the post row height should be only as high as needed to fit post content. If the user doesn't post enough, his avatar/user info is trimmed. That should be doable with SVG avatars at least.

RealityVoid 9y ago

I think that is a pretty cool project there. I like it but I don't know, do you get many people using it? I think there are quite a bit of forum platforms out there.

KajMagnus 9y ago
> do you get many people using it? No not yet. So far I've been focused on coding though (and I've learned that's the wrong way to get things done, I should instead start with validating the idea). But now a MVP is finished, and I'm shifting focus to marketing & PR. And one of the first steps, is ... to rename the project from EffectiveDiscussions to Talkyard. That's what I've been doing the past week, and ... the plan thereafter is to focus a bit on embedded comments for static site generators. There seems to be a slight vacuum here; Disqus isn't so popular any longer, it seems to me, among tech people = those who use static generators. > there are quite a bit of forum platforms out there Yes that's a problem for me. When I started this, in year 2010, there weren't. But I spent many years doing the wrong things, getting a job again & doing this on the spare time only ... and now suddenly there's Discourse, Flarum, Slack, Mattermost, Rocket Chat, Spot.IM, Discord, Matrix, and others. Maybe I was too slow. On the other hand, Talkyard is the only project with HackerNews topic types + chat features combined, so maybe it can find its niche.

b0rsuk 9y ago

Indentation depth is an issue for me, too. I would solve this differently: color coded post backgrounds (or similar indicators). Parent post = red indentation 1 = orange yellow, blue, green, brown, grey, black, white, etc. Then colors could cycle. I think it would make it easy at a glance to recognize which posts respond to what, after some initial getting used to. No clicking required and I think it's more intuitive. For colorblind users you could use SVG pattern backgrounds. In fact, it could be better for everyone, because you could have more patterns than visually distinct colors.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
KajMagnus 9y ago
This is an interesting idea I think. Actually, on narrow screens, I don't use more than one or two indentation levels. Thereafter everything is flat — and instead of arrows, there're clickable "In reply to @username" text one can click and jump to the parent comment. Here, the color coding you describe, could maybe be helpful. When there is enough space for indendation, though, I'd prefer indenting. Otherwise, cannot visualize more than the first indentation depth, right. (Hmm not sure what you have in mind with "no clicking required" — Hacker News and Talkyard also don't require any clicking?)
- b0rsuk 9y ago
  I don't mean colors instead of indentation, I mean in addition to. Indentation works well when there are very few replies and few indentation levels. But once there's a long debate, it becomes a well. Then when the well ends it's very hard to immediately tell what it's responding to. No clicking required - I mean clicking to jump to parent. That's introducing GOTOs to online discussion. If possible, I'd rather have a more intuitive way. Or maybe even something as blunt as printing the indentation level directly as a number!
  - KajMagnus 9y ago
    Aha, now I think I better understand what you mean. When coloring posts in the way you have in mind, then, to find the parent comment, one would look at the comments above, for a comment in a certain color? Then one won't need to rely so much on the indentation depth. Hmm that's an interesting idea. I'm a bit worried the resulting page would make use of too many colors — maybe a grayscale and patterns would be better (like you mentioned). One would, however, still need to click-and-jump, or scroll-manually, to find the parent, if one needs to reread it, and it's not on screen. I think the colors would mainly be useful on large screens, where one sees the parent comment without scrolling. On mobiles, I think click-to-jump-to-the-parent is more user friendly (rather than scrolling-scrolling-scrolling and scanning for a certain color).

b0rsuk 9y ago

After thinking about it a bit, one of main advantages of HN and reddit is to me very good signal to noise ratio. Screenshots of Talkyard seem to repeat those "socia" etc icons a lot. Most message boards are ugly in this aspect: they use more vertical space for displaying irrelevant user information and avatars, instead of focusing on content. A post 'td' or 'div' is always at least as high as the left box with avatar and user info. Posts with few words become very wasteful. I think it should be the opposite: the post row height should be only as high as needed to fit post content. If the user doesn't post enough, his avatar/user info is trimmed. That should be doable with SVG avatars at least.