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Ohh I miss the good old days of forums in general. I find all this new software, where conversions* are "threaded" stupidly hard to read. Even worse, when the s

Ohh I miss the good old days of forums in general. I find all this new software, where conversions* are "threaded" stupidly hard to read. Even worse, when the software is trying to recommend to you, what to read. Back in the day you had a thread, every post to that thread was chronologically added to that thread and in case you wanted to reply to someone, you quoted them... sigh EDITED: *conversations

Semaphor 4y ago
I actually love threaded discussions… On HN and Old Reddit. But anything is better than whatever XDA uses, and almost everything is better than discourse.
- ngrilly 4y ago
  I also prefer reading threaded discussions, but are you aware of a good way of keeping track of new messages? That’s my main issue with threaded discussions, for example here on HN.
  - halikular 4y ago
    Notifications and sorting for new like reddit has.
    - asddubs 4y ago
      that only really works for responses to your comments and top level comment chains though.
      - Semaphor 4y ago
        Technically, you should be able to subscribe to any comment’s descendants. But that is not implemented anywhere I know, sadly.
  - busymom0 4y ago
    I am the developer of HACK, an iOS, android, MacOS client app which provides push notifications for HN when someone replies to your comment or post.
  - layer8 4y ago
    The way Usenet clients and traditional email clients work is that unread messages are marked as such (usually by use of bold typeface), and you have keyboard shortcuts to navigate from one message to the next, or to jump to the next unread message. For example, the Tab key jumps to the next unread message, Space/Backspace scroll up/down within a message, and the Up/Down arrow keys jump to the previous/next message (regardless if unread or not). A message is marked as read automatically when you navigate to it (it gains focus). There’s also a keyboard shortcut to mark a read message as unread again if you w. The keyboard navigation means that only one message has focus any point in time. You have a threaded view of all messages, where the unread ones are highlighted (e.g. by bold typeface). Then you can decide which ones to navigate to. Usually you just use Tab and Space to jump/scroll through the unread messages. It’s incredibly efficient to use.
- ratww 4y ago
  > Old Reddit Important distinction. New Reddit also fell prey to bad development practices and is without exaggeration unusable for me. It often "crashes" and the whole page goes dark-grey on my browser, and this has been happening for at least a year. After reloading I can't see all messages without navigating away, and middle click messes with the scrolling. At this point I will assume they either don't care or are fucking with me.
  - ffhhj 4y ago
    Which browser do you use?
    - ratww 4y ago
      Firefox mostly, but that also happens with Safari in my other PC.
dspillett 4y ago
> find all this new software, where conversions are "threaded" stupidly hard to read. This is not new, it just isn't applied to web based forums as much as I (someone who likes threaded discussions like that) would like. For small discussions it make little difference, for large branching threads it can help greatly when you don't care to follow all the sub-threads. It was not uncommon in Usenet clients back in the day. Of course it needs to be coupled with good UI for collapsing branches and otherwise navigating the tree, and perhaps a chronological view option for issue who prefer that (or a tree-view with posts spaced by arrival order for the best of both of you do it right - I had a reader that did that but can't currently remember it's name).
dmitriid 4y ago
Threaded conversations are really good because you can have branching discussions that don't interfere with each other. But the only forum I know of that realised how to properly do it is this old Russian software forum [1] You need a mail client-like interface so that you can see your place in the discussion. Triple quoting someone and trying to read the actual thread in a flat forum sucked then and sucks now. [1] Example link http://rsdn.org/?forum/philosophy/8357952 http://rsdn.org/?forum/philosophy/8357952
- mostlysimilar 4y ago
  vBulletin 3.x/4.x and IPB 2.x/3.x had threaded view as an option alongside flat. Forum software of old actually gave users the power to choose the interface they want. We've really gone backwards with software interfaces. Also, themes. These days all we get are "Dark Mode" and "Light Mode". Boring.
- IshKebab 4y ago
  Check out the D language forums. Easily the best forum software I've seen.
  - llanowarelves 4y ago
    What are they using?
    - anta40 4y ago
      https://github.com/CyberShadow/DFeed https://github.com/CyberShadow/DFeed
      - llanowarelves 4y ago
        Thank you. I just found it now on my own on desktop via their "About this forum" footer link, wasn't obvious to me when I quickly glanced at it on mobile earlier.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
com2kid 4y ago
I miss the good old days of BBSes, the late 90s were a serious step back in forum usability. Until JS came along, reading online forums on a broadband internet connection was a worse user experience than using BBS forum software on a dial up modem. Every single action, full page reload. And until cloud computing came along, even the best of website forums had servers that took forever to respond. Somehow a BBS written for a 386 16mhz in 1992 was faster than a forum written in 1999 or even 2005. Oh wait, the 1992 forum was likely written in C, or even assembly! (And it only had 1 user at a time, that helped!)
cygx 4y ago
Ohh I miss the good old days of forums in general. I find all this new software, where conversions are "threaded" stupidly hard to read. A 'classical' web forum is threaded, contrasting with an unthreaded (bulletin) board - at least that's how the terminology was used in the German webdev scene of the late 90s/early 2000s, possibly due to the prominence of SELFHTML and its forum.
jonnycomputer 4y ago
I find HN's approach very easy to read and follow. But then, each submission does not keep getting commented on indefinitely. Could get unwieldy then.
- asddubs 4y ago
  it works if you want to read a thread exactly once and then never come back to it. if it's an ongoing discussion that you want to visit even just two times, you'll just end up reading all the same comments again and struggle to find anything new
IshKebab 4y ago
I too miss the good old days where the information you wanted was buried somewhere in a 100 page phpBB thread and you had to manually search through it 1 page at a time, with each one-line comment taking up half the page with avatars and signatures. Good times. Sad that things have moved on to systems that don't suck quite so much but that's progress for you.
deniska 4y ago
My favorite kind of web forum engine is the one which keeps discussions threaded, but displays them in a flat list of messages ordered by time, but with quick navigation to parent and responses.

Semaphor 4y ago

I actually love threaded discussions… On HN and Old Reddit. But anything is better than whatever XDA uses, and almost everything is better than discourse.

ngrilly 4y ago
I also prefer reading threaded discussions, but are you aware of a good way of keeping track of new messages? That’s my main issue with threaded discussions, for example here on HN.
- halikular 4y ago
  Notifications and sorting for new like reddit has.
  - asddubs 4y ago
    that only really works for responses to your comments and top level comment chains though.
    - Semaphor 4y ago
      Technically, you should be able to subscribe to any comment’s descendants. But that is not implemented anywhere I know, sadly.
- busymom0 4y ago
  I am the developer of HACK, an iOS, android, MacOS client app which provides push notifications for HN when someone replies to your comment or post.
- layer8 4y ago
  The way Usenet clients and traditional email clients work is that unread messages are marked as such (usually by use of bold typeface), and you have keyboard shortcuts to navigate from one message to the next, or to jump to the next unread message. For example, the Tab key jumps to the next unread message, Space/Backspace scroll up/down within a message, and the Up/Down arrow keys jump to the previous/next message (regardless if unread or not). A message is marked as read automatically when you navigate to it (it gains focus). There’s also a keyboard shortcut to mark a read message as unread again if you w. The keyboard navigation means that only one message has focus any point in time. You have a threaded view of all messages, where the unread ones are highlighted (e.g. by bold typeface). Then you can decide which ones to navigate to. Usually you just use Tab and Space to jump/scroll through the unread messages. It’s incredibly efficient to use.
ratww 4y ago
> Old Reddit Important distinction. New Reddit also fell prey to bad development practices and is without exaggeration unusable for me. It often "crashes" and the whole page goes dark-grey on my browser, and this has been happening for at least a year. After reloading I can't see all messages without navigating away, and middle click messes with the scrolling. At this point I will assume they either don't care or are fucking with me.
- ffhhj 4y ago
  Which browser do you use?
  - ratww 4y ago
    Firefox mostly, but that also happens with Safari in my other PC.

dspillett 4y ago

> find all this new software, where conversions are "threaded" stupidly hard to read. This is not new, it just isn't applied to web based forums as much as I (someone who likes threaded discussions like that) would like. For small discussions it make little difference, for large branching threads it can help greatly when you don't care to follow all the sub-threads. It was not uncommon in Usenet clients back in the day. Of course it needs to be coupled with good UI for collapsing branches and otherwise navigating the tree, and perhaps a chronological view option for issue who prefer that (or a tree-view with posts spaced by arrival order for the best of both of you do it right - I had a reader that did that but can't currently remember it's name).

dmitriid 4y ago

Threaded conversations are really good because you can have branching discussions that don't interfere with each other. But the only forum I know of that realised how to properly do it is this old Russian software forum [1] You need a mail client-like interface so that you can see your place in the discussion. Triple quoting someone and trying to read the actual thread in a flat forum sucked then and sucks now. [1] Example link http://rsdn.org/?forum/philosophy/8357952 http://rsdn.org/?forum/philosophy/8357952

mostlysimilar 4y ago
vBulletin 3.x/4.x and IPB 2.x/3.x had threaded view as an option alongside flat. Forum software of old actually gave users the power to choose the interface they want. We've really gone backwards with software interfaces. Also, themes. These days all we get are "Dark Mode" and "Light Mode". Boring.
IshKebab 4y ago
Check out the D language forums. Easily the best forum software I've seen.
- llanowarelves 4y ago
  What are they using?
  - anta40 4y ago
    https://github.com/CyberShadow/DFeed https://github.com/CyberShadow/DFeed
    - llanowarelves 4y ago
      Thank you. I just found it now on my own on desktop via their "About this forum" footer link, wasn't obvious to me when I quickly glanced at it on mobile earlier.
- dmitriid 4y ago

com2kid 4y ago

I miss the good old days of BBSes, the late 90s were a serious step back in forum usability. Until JS came along, reading online forums on a broadband internet connection was a worse user experience than using BBS forum software on a dial up modem. Every single action, full page reload. And until cloud computing came along, even the best of website forums had servers that took forever to respond. Somehow a BBS written for a 386 16mhz in 1992 was faster than a forum written in 1999 or even 2005. Oh wait, the 1992 forum was likely written in C, or even assembly! (And it only had 1 user at a time, that helped!)

cygx 4y ago

Ohh I miss the good old days of forums in general. I find all this new software, where conversions are "threaded" stupidly hard to read. A 'classical' web forum is threaded, contrasting with an unthreaded (bulletin) board - at least that's how the terminology was used in the German webdev scene of the late 90s/early 2000s, possibly due to the prominence of SELFHTML and its forum.

jonnycomputer 4y ago

I find HN's approach very easy to read and follow. But then, each submission does not keep getting commented on indefinitely. Could get unwieldy then.

asddubs 4y ago
it works if you want to read a thread exactly once and then never come back to it. if it's an ongoing discussion that you want to visit even just two times, you'll just end up reading all the same comments again and struggle to find anything new

IshKebab 4y ago

I too miss the good old days where the information you wanted was buried somewhere in a 100 page phpBB thread and you had to manually search through it 1 page at a time, with each one-line comment taking up half the page with avatars and signatures. Good times. Sad that things have moved on to systems that don't suck quite so much but that's progress for you.

deniska 4y ago

My favorite kind of web forum engine is the one which keeps discussions threaded, but displays them in a flat list of messages ordered by time, but with quick navigation to parent and responses.