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Note that this thread is still active 13 years later! The most recent post is by the OP, and reads: > I want to take a moment to recognize that the Homemade H

Note that this thread is still active 13 years later! The most recent post is by the OP, and reads: > I want to take a moment to recognize that the Homemade Heat Pump Manifesto has gone beyond 2 million page views. I would like to thank Daox and any other people who may have worked behind the scene to make it possible. > My initial goal was to make available the knowledge and possibility that anybody with a few tools and gumption could convert discarded air conditioners, and dehumidifiers into very high efficiency heat ources, or cooling sources. Through the years, we have received reports of success from many people, living in many states, and countries. > Another goal was to make zero money from this project, to give it away and to encourage others to take it, share it, sell it. > In the beginning I thought that maybe 200 people would find this interesting. Obviously, I was wrong, gloriously wrong.

layer8 4y ago
And that is why traditional web forums and their discoverability are great. This wouldn’t work on Reddit or Discord.
- HenriTEL 4y ago
  What makes you think reddit is not discoverable?
  - kybernetyk 4y ago
    sometimes whole subreddits get deleted because of $reasons. sometimes I get to a link and a message greets me: this subreddit has been deleted because of no moderation.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      Whole forums go missing, too.
      - layer8 4y ago
        It’s straightforward to have them archived on archive.org though, because they are more akin to static web pages than to a web app.
      - Scoundreller 4y ago
        Or the image boards that have all of the instructional photos from 10y ago disappear, or go premium but the original poster is MIA/dead. Faaaack, I’m still maintaining this 17yo Toyota. I need those brake change pictures!
  - slowmotiony 4y ago
    It's discoverable but you can't post comments in old threads, after a few months they get "archived" and you can't reply any more.
    - brazzy 4y ago
      This has changed. I just replied to a 5 year old post of mine to confirm.
      - ginja 4y ago
        I think it depends on the subreddit. E.g. this is archived: https://old.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/hmoabi/ive_designed_brand_new_cheatsheets_x2_and/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/hmoabi/ive_designed...
      - Forgeties79 4y ago
        A Reddit thread is automatically archived due to inactivity, forgot the exact duration. So in theory as long as somebody is posting a comment on a thread every few weeks (months?) it never archives unless the mods manually do it. The problem with this is that adding comments to a thread does nothing to make it more visible. Traditional forms bump up all threads as long as they have recent activity, which Reddit doesn’t do. The closest solution you could probably find would be for the mods to pin the post to the top, but in my experience most people just ignore pinned posts except in very specific cases.
        teraflop 4y ago
        That's not correct. On Reddit, thread archiving (on subreddits that haven't opted to keep threads open forever) is based on time elapsed since the thread was posted, regardless of how much activity there's been. IIRC the interval is 6 months.
        Forgeties79 4y ago
        Hmm it appears you’re right. What I described used to be the case but they changed it several years ago it looks like. https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/25kvjo/reddit_change_the_logic_for_archiving_posts_has/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/25kvjo/reddit_ch...
  - dna_polymerase 4y ago
    Reddit Threads are locked after a while aren’t they? Even if all of this would be in a Reddit thread I’d argue the usability of their site has declined to a point where using it for longer reading is unpleasant. (Login-Wall, collapsed threads, slow JavaScript frontend) So yeah discoverable yes, but nobody would use it like that.
    - brazzy 4y ago
      > Reddit Threads are locked after a while aren’t they? Not anymore.
      - wholinator2 4y ago
        What? I've seen more recent threads getting "archived" (no one can comment or vote) earlier and earlier than ever. It used to be that every thread was guaranteed to stay communicable for at least a year, maybe 2. That was enough for most things but still represented a discontinuity in the transfer of knowledge as a new thread would need to be made and gain traction and votes and rarely (very rarely) the previous thread would be linked to avoid just recycling the same points and never making progress. That exceedingly rare linking now basically never happens and threads get archived as early as 6 months! I assume there's some variation as I believe I may have seen threads that don't get locked so early but it's a significant disruptor on the transfer of knowledge. And with how bad reddit's searching is, unless the previous thread is linked there's a tiny chance you'll ever find it let alone even know it existed. That format just promotes reposting and restating the exact points that were popular 6 months ago. There have been many times I have had something to contribute to a discussion and have been rebuffed by the "This thread has been archived" popup. Truly any thread more than a year could not survive most current social conglomerates, I understand the scaling issues but it does not make it untrue.
        brazzy 4y ago
        Yeah, independant of the auto-locking (which is apparently opt-out per subreddit), old threads just don't have any visibility to stay alive.
  - layer8 4y ago
    What I mean regarding Reddit is that you couldn’t have a thread running for 13 years like that, which you could easily follow (track up to which comment you’ve already read) and conveniently browse like on a forum. Pagination is important for that. On web forums, a new comment on a thread automatically bumps that thread up to the top of the thread list, which means that even after a pause, existing threads gain traction like if they were new threads. (Possibly even more than new threads, due to the existing contents.) That way it’s easy to have a focused discussion for weeks/months/years on a particular subtopic.
    - hutrdvnj 4y ago
      But the problem with that approach is that people tend to revive zombie threads. I would estimate that <1% of threads actually have any useful discussion after 10 years, the rest is bumping zombie threads.
      - soulofmischief 4y ago
        A simple visual indicator of the age of a post such as a zombie emoji (or something less tacky) is all that is needed to quickly disregard zombie posts you aren't interested in. Forums are great but we definitely need a UX overhaul incorporating the last 15 years of web UX research.
        layer8 4y ago
        About UX, I agree insofar as web forums have worse usability than Usenet clients had before. However, I don’t see how web UX has improved in the last 15 years, in particular on the desktop, and in particular regarding forum and messaging apps.
        soulofmischief 4y ago
        Mainstream design has taken a total nosedive, but there's still great UX research being done across multiple domains, one big driver being games.
  - neither_color 4y ago
    On a ten year old reddit thread you'll find the top voted answers and top voted replies to those answers but not a sequential discussion for page after page.
  - xani_ 4y ago
    The thread would disappear from front page after days so new people wouldn't come in and talk about it constantly
  - sgt 4y ago
    IMHO a bit of the problem with Reddit is that it's so extremely threaded. I can understand replying to an individual message within a discussion topic, but the tree growing to the right just makes it hard to find out what's the "latest". The great thing about old style forums is that you'll check it once in a while and just go looking for the "latest" message, almost like joining IRC after a few days. You can go look at earlier messages but it's not always necessary. Or am I wrong - can you make some sub-reddits work that way ?
  - parkingrift 4y ago
    It’s barely usable, for starters. Desperately trying to coerce me into downloading some mobile app. Riddled with ads and UI/UX anti-patterns. It looks more like a spyware site or a scam site than the modern “front page of the internet” they liken themselves as. For the rare times I want to navigate to that cesspool I have to manually change the URL to “old” but it’s just a matter of time before they get rid of it. Not to mention all the other issues that plague the site. Archived posts, dead links, deleted posts, deleted comments, deleted entire subreddits, and more. It’s not a place to effectively find older content much less truly old content. And worst of all the search function is comically useless so much so that there is practically zero self discovering within Reddit itself. You must exit Reddit and search on a search engine with “reddit” at the end of your query. What a junk site.
    - walterbell 4y ago
      StopTheMadness can change the URL to old.reddit automatically, on iOS and other platforms.

layer8 4y ago

And that is why traditional web forums and their discoverability are great. This wouldn’t work on Reddit or Discord.

HenriTEL 4y ago
What makes you think reddit is not discoverable?
- kybernetyk 4y ago
  sometimes whole subreddits get deleted because of $reasons. sometimes I get to a link and a message greets me: this subreddit has been deleted because of no moderation.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    Whole forums go missing, too.
    - layer8 4y ago
      It’s straightforward to have them archived on archive.org though, because they are more akin to static web pages than to a web app.
    - Scoundreller 4y ago
      Or the image boards that have all of the instructional photos from 10y ago disappear, or go premium but the original poster is MIA/dead. Faaaack, I’m still maintaining this 17yo Toyota. I need those brake change pictures!
- slowmotiony 4y ago
  It's discoverable but you can't post comments in old threads, after a few months they get "archived" and you can't reply any more.
  - brazzy 4y ago
    This has changed. I just replied to a 5 year old post of mine to confirm.
    - ginja 4y ago
      I think it depends on the subreddit. E.g. this is archived: https://old.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/hmoabi/ive_designed_brand_new_cheatsheets_x2_and/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/hmoabi/ive_designed...
    - Forgeties79 4y ago
      A Reddit thread is automatically archived due to inactivity, forgot the exact duration. So in theory as long as somebody is posting a comment on a thread every few weeks (months?) it never archives unless the mods manually do it. The problem with this is that adding comments to a thread does nothing to make it more visible. Traditional forms bump up all threads as long as they have recent activity, which Reddit doesn’t do. The closest solution you could probably find would be for the mods to pin the post to the top, but in my experience most people just ignore pinned posts except in very specific cases.
      - teraflop 4y ago
        That's not correct. On Reddit, thread archiving (on subreddits that haven't opted to keep threads open forever) is based on time elapsed since the thread was posted, regardless of how much activity there's been. IIRC the interval is 6 months.
        Forgeties79 4y ago
        Hmm it appears you’re right. What I described used to be the case but they changed it several years ago it looks like. https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/25kvjo/reddit_change_the_logic_for_archiving_posts_has/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/25kvjo/reddit_ch...
- dna_polymerase 4y ago
  Reddit Threads are locked after a while aren’t they? Even if all of this would be in a Reddit thread I’d argue the usability of their site has declined to a point where using it for longer reading is unpleasant. (Login-Wall, collapsed threads, slow JavaScript frontend) So yeah discoverable yes, but nobody would use it like that.
  - brazzy 4y ago
    > Reddit Threads are locked after a while aren’t they? Not anymore.
    - wholinator2 4y ago
      What? I've seen more recent threads getting "archived" (no one can comment or vote) earlier and earlier than ever. It used to be that every thread was guaranteed to stay communicable for at least a year, maybe 2. That was enough for most things but still represented a discontinuity in the transfer of knowledge as a new thread would need to be made and gain traction and votes and rarely (very rarely) the previous thread would be linked to avoid just recycling the same points and never making progress. That exceedingly rare linking now basically never happens and threads get archived as early as 6 months! I assume there's some variation as I believe I may have seen threads that don't get locked so early but it's a significant disruptor on the transfer of knowledge. And with how bad reddit's searching is, unless the previous thread is linked there's a tiny chance you'll ever find it let alone even know it existed. That format just promotes reposting and restating the exact points that were popular 6 months ago. There have been many times I have had something to contribute to a discussion and have been rebuffed by the "This thread has been archived" popup. Truly any thread more than a year could not survive most current social conglomerates, I understand the scaling issues but it does not make it untrue.
      - brazzy 4y ago
        Yeah, independant of the auto-locking (which is apparently opt-out per subreddit), old threads just don't have any visibility to stay alive.
- layer8 4y ago
  What I mean regarding Reddit is that you couldn’t have a thread running for 13 years like that, which you could easily follow (track up to which comment you’ve already read) and conveniently browse like on a forum. Pagination is important for that. On web forums, a new comment on a thread automatically bumps that thread up to the top of the thread list, which means that even after a pause, existing threads gain traction like if they were new threads. (Possibly even more than new threads, due to the existing contents.) That way it’s easy to have a focused discussion for weeks/months/years on a particular subtopic.
  - hutrdvnj 4y ago
    But the problem with that approach is that people tend to revive zombie threads. I would estimate that <1% of threads actually have any useful discussion after 10 years, the rest is bumping zombie threads.
    - soulofmischief 4y ago
      A simple visual indicator of the age of a post such as a zombie emoji (or something less tacky) is all that is needed to quickly disregard zombie posts you aren't interested in. Forums are great but we definitely need a UX overhaul incorporating the last 15 years of web UX research.
      - layer8 4y ago
        About UX, I agree insofar as web forums have worse usability than Usenet clients had before. However, I don’t see how web UX has improved in the last 15 years, in particular on the desktop, and in particular regarding forum and messaging apps.
        soulofmischief 4y ago
        Mainstream design has taken a total nosedive, but there's still great UX research being done across multiple domains, one big driver being games.
- neither_color 4y ago
  On a ten year old reddit thread you'll find the top voted answers and top voted replies to those answers but not a sequential discussion for page after page.
- xani_ 4y ago
  The thread would disappear from front page after days so new people wouldn't come in and talk about it constantly
- sgt 4y ago
  IMHO a bit of the problem with Reddit is that it's so extremely threaded. I can understand replying to an individual message within a discussion topic, but the tree growing to the right just makes it hard to find out what's the "latest". The great thing about old style forums is that you'll check it once in a while and just go looking for the "latest" message, almost like joining IRC after a few days. You can go look at earlier messages but it's not always necessary. Or am I wrong - can you make some sub-reddits work that way ?
- parkingrift 4y ago
  It’s barely usable, for starters. Desperately trying to coerce me into downloading some mobile app. Riddled with ads and UI/UX anti-patterns. It looks more like a spyware site or a scam site than the modern “front page of the internet” they liken themselves as. For the rare times I want to navigate to that cesspool I have to manually change the URL to “old” but it’s just a matter of time before they get rid of it. Not to mention all the other issues that plague the site. Archived posts, dead links, deleted posts, deleted comments, deleted entire subreddits, and more. It’s not a place to effectively find older content much less truly old content. And worst of all the search function is comically useless so much so that there is practically zero self discovering within Reddit itself. You must exit Reddit and search on a search engine with “reddit” at the end of your query. What a junk site.
  - walterbell 4y ago
    StopTheMadness can change the URL to old.reddit automatically, on iOS and other platforms.