4 ms·

Some anecdotes from running multiple forum sites over the years: Most forums end up using flat replies because normal people don't understand threaded replies.

Some anecdotes from running multiple forum sites over the years: Most forums end up using flat replies because normal people don't understand threaded replies. A friend at YouTube recently said that their research backed up that anecdotal assumption. A couple of the major forum vendors tried offering hosted solutions and it wasn't sustainable as a business model for them; they both went back to simply licensing the forum software itself. Forum communities are like any other social system: network effects and "where your friends are" are what keep you from leaving. Most "power user" features go unused by the majority. Stats like only 3% in one community use the friends list, only 10% in another use the profiles, etc. It's never about the feature set, it's all about the community. Existing forum software is basically a black box. It's hard to integrate with and expand. It's hands-off for the admin until they realize they want a site that's more than just a forum.

retube 16y ago
It's interesting what you say about flat replies. Although a "technical" person, I can't believe that users are not wanting to reply to individual posts. Perhaps it's a UI issue?
- _delirium 16y ago
  There are certain social dynamics that have grown up around this variety of single-thread-per-post forum: discussion is channeled into essentially one discussion per post (you start a new post if you want to fork it); threads are "bumped" when someone replies and the expectation is that it's a reply to the main thread of conversation; the pagination encourages discussion to move on (in a 50-page thread, you don't normally belatedly reply to something on page 8, unless you have a good reason for it); etc. Threaded discussions are very different in style imo, and have less of a "conversation" feel. I tend to prefer threaded overall, but there are some non-threaded forums I'm on where I don't think the community would work as well with threaded. For example, I don't think the SomethingAwful forums would work well at all as a Slashdot-style (K5-style, HN-style, reddit-style) threaded forum. Actually, I think some parts of reddit would work better with unthreaded; there's often a sort of urban-sprawl feel to the thread branching there.

retube 16y ago

It's interesting what you say about flat replies. Although a "technical" person, I can't believe that users are not wanting to reply to individual posts. Perhaps it's a UI issue?

_delirium 16y ago
There are certain social dynamics that have grown up around this variety of single-thread-per-post forum: discussion is channeled into essentially one discussion per post (you start a new post if you want to fork it); threads are "bumped" when someone replies and the expectation is that it's a reply to the main thread of conversation; the pagination encourages discussion to move on (in a 50-page thread, you don't normally belatedly reply to something on page 8, unless you have a good reason for it); etc. Threaded discussions are very different in style imo, and have less of a "conversation" feel. I tend to prefer threaded overall, but there are some non-threaded forums I'm on where I don't think the community would work as well with threaded. For example, I don't think the SomethingAwful forums would work well at all as a Slashdot-style (K5-style, HN-style, reddit-style) threaded forum. Actually, I think some parts of reddit would work better with unthreaded; there's often a sort of urban-sprawl feel to the thread branching there.