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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 inste

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

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).