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I accidentally run into this post while researching personal wikis. On the one hand I don't agree that the chronological log structure is that bad (it actually

by marbu 4y ago

I accidentally run into this post while researching personal wikis. On the one hand I don't agree that the chronological log structure is that bad (it actually works quite well in many cases), on the other hand it has a point that there are other ways to organize personal pages which makes sense as well.

082349872349872 4y ago
What the chronological structure broke (for me) was long form conversation — threads that evolve over weeks and months (in the extreme, sometimes even years). HN is a perfect example: the dynamics of the site drive a "speed dating" feel: where hot takes are encouraged and exploration in depth takes unusual commitment by all parties to keep digging ever further back into their history just to continue a conversation.
- marbu 4y ago
  I'm not sure this effect is caused by a chronological structure. For example here, one can use "threads" link to see if someone is responding on their comments and react no matter how old the comments are. If that feature wasn't there, I would not be writing this comment right now. What makes is hard to keep old threads alive over weeks or more is imho rather the volume of new posts and comments.
  - 082349872349872 4y ago
    right; I'm just blaming chronological for the fact that to find your reply —even from today— I've had to manually go back in "threads"; if the site had meant to encourage long-lived threads, the new posts and comments wouldn't bury the old ones. (compare to a mailing list, where as soon as one participant has resurrected a thread, even one from deep in the archives, it is easily replied to by all participants) [Edit: once a week I try to go back 7 days in threads to check (most manually) for fresh replies, but it's usually a fairly quixotic affectation]
    - marbu 4y ago
      I wouldn't call that chronological, but otherwise you have a good point. This reminds me of a czech forum abclinuxu.cz I used to visit regularly using the following features: 1) dense list of discussions which you are participating in, with a quick way to find new posts there 2) one can optionally "follow" a discussion via email, this way, people sometimes noticed new posts in discussions which were months old Both features were quite visible, so most of active users were using them to some degree. Moreover like hacker news, the discussions were threaded, which is imho another feature which helps with long lived discussion. But compared to hacker news, it has much smaller number of users and lower volume of new posts (even at it's peak), so it's not clear how much would that help given the sheer volume of posts and users there.

by marbu 4y ago

082349872349872 4y ago

What the chronological structure broke (for me) was long form conversation — threads that evolve over weeks and months (in the extreme, sometimes even years). HN is a perfect example: the dynamics of the site drive a "speed dating" feel: where hot takes are encouraged and exploration in depth takes unusual commitment by all parties to keep digging ever further back into their history just to continue a conversation.

marbu 4y ago
I'm not sure this effect is caused by a chronological structure. For example here, one can use "threads" link to see if someone is responding on their comments and react no matter how old the comments are. If that feature wasn't there, I would not be writing this comment right now. What makes is hard to keep old threads alive over weeks or more is imho rather the volume of new posts and comments.
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  right; I'm just blaming chronological for the fact that to find your reply —even from today— I've had to manually go back in "threads"; if the site had meant to encourage long-lived threads, the new posts and comments wouldn't bury the old ones. (compare to a mailing list, where as soon as one participant has resurrected a thread, even one from deep in the archives, it is easily replied to by all participants) [Edit: once a week I try to go back 7 days in threads to check (most manually) for fresh replies, but it's usually a fairly quixotic affectation]
  - marbu 4y ago
    I wouldn't call that chronological, but otherwise you have a good point. This reminds me of a czech forum abclinuxu.cz I used to visit regularly using the following features: 1) dense list of discussions which you are participating in, with a quick way to find new posts there 2) one can optionally "follow" a discussion via email, this way, people sometimes noticed new posts in discussions which were months old Both features were quite visible, so most of active users were using them to some degree. Moreover like hacker news, the discussions were threaded, which is imho another feature which helps with long lived discussion. But compared to hacker news, it has much smaller number of users and lower volume of new posts (even at it's peak), so it's not clear how much would that help given the sheer volume of posts and users there.