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HN feature: A “forum” for topic threads that repeat

19 points by daly 5y ago

We often see certain topics that come around a lot. This week it seems to be variations on "paying open source developers". Perhaps these can be marked as "forums" or "themes" and collected into a single post. It is frustrating to watch the same idea posted every day, only to get swept away beyond post 500 or so. At best what we have now is that someone will add a comment that points to a prior post. A simple (and therefore both controversial and wrong) solution would be to have a "link-to" button that forms a linked list (shades of lisp, eh Paul?).

lproven 5y ago
If I understand you correctly – are you basically proposing a feature which could be implemented like Quora's "merge questions" function? I use that a lot. It's poorly implemented on Quora, but nonetheless, a lot of the time, when someone asks a technical question, it is easier and quicker to find a differently-phrased question and merge the new question with the existing one, than it is to write a comprehensive answer. This way, the person asking immediately sees multiple existing answers... and if people are discussing answers or subtleties of them, then the new asker immediately sees that discussion.
krapp 5y ago
Or rather, auto-merge dupes into a single, rolling thread. Possibly automatically delete subthreads after, say, the 10th or 20th, or after a certain age. Then treat the merged thread as a single unit. Multiple links would be listed in the header, or perhaps as footnotes. The goal would be that no matter how viral a story gets, it only ever takes up a single slot in the frontpage and new comments section. The UI would mostly remain unchanged (no new buttons or links.)
flyingfences 5y ago
Other sites refer to those sorts of threads -- threads for general discussion of a topic or question rather than of a specific article or detail -- as "generals", e.g. "FLOSS Dev Compensation General", "Log4j Vuln General", etc. Long-running threads are better suited to discussion formats with strict time ordering. I'm not sure how a vote-ordered hierarchical comments section could keep up a clean presentation of new developments in the discussion. Linking between threads doesn't look like a practical solution to me; I expect we'd still see the same exchanges rehashed in each thread.
aaron695 5y ago
"paying open source developers" These are Log4j threads right? This is why it'd being discussed, so they should all be merged into one Log4j thread as you travel back in time. Would it be a tree? Or would technical issues about Log4j be along side these political issues as time goes on? How is it decided to link it? What are the mechanisms? It's to time consuming for mods. Would people get value from a formalised structure over the current system where if it's needed people will up-vote relevant links? HN has no sense of time. This would introduce flow of time. That's a big change. HN doesn't seem to be able to learn. That seems like more of an issue. This won't stop the comment threads that reoccur again and again.
1ibsq 5y ago
Following thought comes to my mind: Long and recurring discussions come up on complex (among others) topics. A long and recurring discussion on those topics only arises if more than one party is involved and everybody involved can contribute meaningful input - whether this is questions or answers. So you have a bunch of 'experts' discussing a topic, but here's the problem: Among those experts, who is in the position to stand above everybody else and moderates this thing? Given all participants know each other well and can sort this out, you don't have a problem. But we're talking about the internet. Who is the one sorting out what is meaningful content? What contributes to the discussion? What's necessary and what's bloated information? How to structure prior discussion? All of this has proper potential for a heated discussion on its own. But in the end someone has to have the authority. I try to abstract the problem (as I understand it) and I see an attempt in finding a perfect system. There might be a system that does justice in treating the content of the discussion well (retrospectively) - but the human aspect of discussions ?. This reminds me of an open source project. If the participants want to treat the discussion seriously, they'd have to do serious research of what has happened until now. No room for a lighthearted quick thought, because it probably has been said earlier on. Someone would rightfully point that out, but would that lead to a healthy atmosphere and exchange of thought for all potential people? Surely in some cases and on some topics and with the right people. But in general, I'm not so sure...

19 points by daly 5y ago

lproven 5y ago

If I understand you correctly – are you basically proposing a feature which could be implemented like Quora's "merge questions" function? I use that a lot. It's poorly implemented on Quora, but nonetheless, a lot of the time, when someone asks a technical question, it is easier and quicker to find a differently-phrased question and merge the new question with the existing one, than it is to write a comprehensive answer. This way, the person asking immediately sees multiple existing answers... and if people are discussing answers or subtleties of them, then the new asker immediately sees that discussion.

krapp 5y ago

Or rather, auto-merge dupes into a single, rolling thread. Possibly automatically delete subthreads after, say, the 10th or 20th, or after a certain age. Then treat the merged thread as a single unit. Multiple links would be listed in the header, or perhaps as footnotes. The goal would be that no matter how viral a story gets, it only ever takes up a single slot in the frontpage and new comments section. The UI would mostly remain unchanged (no new buttons or links.)

flyingfences 5y ago

Other sites refer to those sorts of threads -- threads for general discussion of a topic or question rather than of a specific article or detail -- as "generals", e.g. "FLOSS Dev Compensation General", "Log4j Vuln General", etc. Long-running threads are better suited to discussion formats with strict time ordering. I'm not sure how a vote-ordered hierarchical comments section could keep up a clean presentation of new developments in the discussion. Linking between threads doesn't look like a practical solution to me; I expect we'd still see the same exchanges rehashed in each thread.

aaron695 5y ago

"paying open source developers" These are Log4j threads right? This is why it'd being discussed, so they should all be merged into one Log4j thread as you travel back in time. Would it be a tree? Or would technical issues about Log4j be along side these political issues as time goes on? How is it decided to link it? What are the mechanisms? It's to time consuming for mods. Would people get value from a formalised structure over the current system where if it's needed people will up-vote relevant links? HN has no sense of time. This would introduce flow of time. That's a big change. HN doesn't seem to be able to learn. That seems like more of an issue. This won't stop the comment threads that reoccur again and again.

1ibsq 5y ago

Following thought comes to my mind: Long and recurring discussions come up on complex (among others) topics. A long and recurring discussion on those topics only arises if more than one party is involved and everybody involved can contribute meaningful input - whether this is questions or answers. So you have a bunch of 'experts' discussing a topic, but here's the problem: Among those experts, who is in the position to stand above everybody else and moderates this thing? Given all participants know each other well and can sort this out, you don't have a problem. But we're talking about the internet. Who is the one sorting out what is meaningful content? What contributes to the discussion? What's necessary and what's bloated information? How to structure prior discussion? All of this has proper potential for a heated discussion on its own. But in the end someone has to have the authority. I try to abstract the problem (as I understand it) and I see an attempt in finding a perfect system. There might be a system that does justice in treating the content of the discussion well (retrospectively) - but the human aspect of discussions ?. This reminds me of an open source project. If the participants want to treat the discussion seriously, they'd have to do serious research of what has happened until now. No room for a lighthearted quick thought, because it probably has been said earlier on. Someone would rightfully point that out, but would that lead to a healthy atmosphere and exchange of thought for all potential people? Surely in some cases and on some topics and with the right people. But in general, I'm not so sure...