19 ms·

The best way to have complex discussions?

• mm263 2y ago
  How is this tool different from https://quip.com/ https://quip.com/? I don't see any features that set it aside except "Conclude" button.
  • nmstoker 2y ago
    It's open source (https://github.com/cq2-co/cq2 https://github.com/cq2-co/cq2) and not part of Salesforce, both appealling features. But deeper than that I have no experience of Quip (and precious little of CQ2 beyond the blog post) so can't comment reliably.
  • wenc 2y ago
    How is Quip different from Google Docs? Neither are discussion tools. (I use Quip a lot) Quip has almost exactly the same feature set as google docs — which part of quip were you referring to?
• nakedneuron 2y ago
  We need to rethink the foundations.
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    Can you elaborate?
• adamfeldman 2y ago
  How does CQ2 compare to Zulip?
  • rockooooo 2y ago
    Zulip is more of a Slack-like instant chat system with threading as a first class citizen; CQ2 looks like threads only exist in the context of one "root" document vs a channel in zulip where threads can intermingle.
    • anandbaburajan 2y ago
      And neither Slack nor Zulip are suitable for complex discussions.
      • alya 2y ago
        Zulip's core design goal is to make it effective for complex discussions, and our users tell us that it's working. E.g., cutting-edge math research https://zulip.com/case-studies/lean/ https://zulip.com/case-studies/lean/; Rust language development https://zulip.com/case-studies/rust/ https://zulip.com/case-studies/rust/.
• chrisjj 2y ago
  Google Wave again?
  • daedalus_j 2y ago
    I was scrolling through looking for the Google Wave comment. Sad to see it at the bottom. Wave was, IMHO, the UI paradigm of the future for this sort of thing. I have hope that it was just too far ahead of it's time and something like it will catch on again. I think the problem it suffered from, besides being a little too "out there" for the average user, was that it required to much careful attention to how you used it. Where to fork the discussions, where to spilt them off into their own wave leaving only a link in their place, etc. It just doesn't work for people for whom the "reply all" button seems a sensible solution.... I had such hope for it though. The technical side seems pretty well solved at this point, it seems like that we need is a crack team of psychologists and UX people to have a go at the problem.
    • chrisjj 2y ago
      > Wave was, IMHO, the UI paradigm of the future for this sort of thing. I have hope that it was just too far ahead of it's time and something like it will catch on again. This paradigm is alive and well at www.cix.co.uk - which predated Wave by 20yrs. HN looks based on it. I agree. Its way beyond what today's average user wants.
    • Esras 2y ago
      > ... too much careful attention to how you used it. Zulip has been mentioned a couple of times in this thread, with similar results in utilization. I like learning and exploring new tools, but if there's one thing I've learned about building them is that most people are only interested in using your tool to the barest minimum to get the result they need. See (without citation) how many software engineers you know don't "understand" Git beyond add / commit / push. What that means is that if you have a dedicated group of people that is interested in exploring a new tool and understanding it, then great! Those people are going to love the tool and take the time to learn it. But the demands of society / work / time limits means that most of the time, they don't want to spend that time investment. It might be a "waste" of time, it might not solve the right problem, other people also have to invest the time, etc. That friction is huge. That's why Slack took off at first, and then Discord blew it away in the consumer world. Discord removed those internal silos, had a lot of the same chrome on it that Slack did for IRC, and then they've continued to make certain things very easy to do within their platform (jumping into voice chats, for instance). But, if you see the newest way they've tried to have threads act as forum messages or posts, there's no consensus on how to use them effectively and I haven't seen them used much, as a result. Anyway, one day we'll get Wave again and hopefully it won't be killed before its time, for those few of us that really loved it.
• s3r3nity 2y ago
  This seems to be heavily inspired by Workflowy's "fractal comments" feature: https://workflowy.com/help/fractal-comments/ https://workflowy.com/help/fractal-comments/
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    Nope, didn't know about it. Looks interesting.
• canadiantim 2y ago
  I wish this website didn’t have new ways to prevent me from scrolling tho. Anyone else unable to scroll the website on mobile?
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    Can you share which page you faced trouble with?
    • canadiantim 2y ago
      For sure, it was just the main page. On my phone I can't scroll down (Iphone XR, latest ios). Behaves like an image, i can't even select text.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• aeontech 2y ago
  This also reminds me a little of Kialo (with a canonical holy war of Vim vs Emacs, of course: https://www.kialo.com/vim-vs-emacs-19293 https://www.kialo.com/vim-vs-emacs-19293)
  • wenc 2y ago
    Kialo looks interesting but it looks like it ends up being a binary tree of pros and cons? (Ie debate outcome) One shortcoming of debates is assuming that there are only two positions. I get that it’s a simplification to help us manage our thoughts but in many complex discussions the answer is usually a combination of both sides.
    • natmaka 2y ago
      Such a combination can become a leaf, triggering a new debate refining it further. I can't fathom a more practical way to explore a subject (and, if necessary, make a decision).
      • anandbaburajan 2y ago
        I like Kialo too! But it's more like a tool for simple discussions on simple/complex topics, not a tool for complex discussions.
• basil-rash 2y ago
  The best way IMO is still (somehow) a 4chan-style linear timeline, with heavy UI affordances to make following >-ref’s simple. This application (and HN, and Reddit) go with the “threads on threads on threads” tree, which is awful for when you want to respond to a specific subset of replies to the same parent comment at once. How could it be improved? I say embrace the DAG nature of the beast and allow for selecting a specific set of parent nodes a comment is in reply to, and, importantly, make that set editable so when some other person comes in and replies to a comment with a topic that has already been discussed, you can link your earlier replay to that new parent without needing a “see my reply here” comment.
  • senkora 2y ago
    I like this thought but note that it would no longer technically be a DAG if you allowed editing earlier comments to link to later comments.
    • James_K 2y ago
      This is easy to solve by representing edits as amendments. Each edit forms a new "reply" node in the graph with the amended content.
      • readyman 2y ago
        Or each edit forms a new "edit" node that new replies are then connected to. Regardless, the DAG can always be preserved somehow.
      • stevage 2y ago
        Ooh, interesting - so it's clear that the B responded to A, not to A'. And your DAG ends up A'->B->A (where -> means responds to). OTOH I'm not sure that cycles are even a huge problem.
        • James_K 2y ago
          They probably aren't a problem, but they might be. I can see there potentially being some graph theory optimisations on the server side you can do if you know you're dealing with a DAG. > And your DAG ends up A'->B->A A' would be in response to A.
• anonymous_union 2y ago
  did they reinvent email threading
  • zbentley 2y ago
    It seems like an enhancement of some parts of email threads rather than a reinvention: replies are identified by where they're rooted rather than a subject; a "concluded" metadata bit is present to at-a-glance delineate stale threads from completed ones; tree structure is enforced by the platform rather than the users following a plain-text convention re: top-posting and quoting; contribution, reply reading, and tree browsing all happen in a single place without involving transmission asynchrony or email clients (which mailing-list-all-the-things zealots probably do not consider an enhancement, but which history indicates most people prefer).
    • anandbaburajan 2y ago
      Wow, thanks for that detailed answer!
• lpapez 2y ago
  > In CQ2, there's no mess of unorganised comments — create threads inside threads so that each thread stays on topic and organised. Wish this could work, but my experience is that getting people to use even the first layer of threads is very difficult, especially non-technical people. IMO most often complex discussions will devolve into a "let's just jump on a quick call to settle this", for better or worse. The feature I am looking forward to the most in comminication apps is having a machine learning model listen to those "quick calls", generate summary and action items and post them right back in the thread. You get the benefits of both worlds that way.
  • zbentley 2y ago
    > getting people to use even the first layer of threads is very difficult, especially non-technical people I've found that as well. I wonder why that is--many times I've been working with someone who is extremely intelligent and methodical as an individual, but structured communication totally breaks down as soon threads enter the picture. Interestingly, this sometimes even happens verbally (at work, when doing tech support on either side of the phone, at feedback discussions with artists/writers, when talking with friends): some folks really do not like "zeroing in" on specific sub-discussion items, talking them out, then moving on or going back to the bigger picture. Instead, they like to jump around or "chroot" the discussion to whatever the most recent topic of interest is. Anecdotally, it's very much a "two kinds of people" situation, but I don't know what the common factor is (and again, I don't think this is a skill/bad-faith issue; these are smart and reasonable people. They just ... don't think in trees or stacks).
    • James_K 2y ago
      For the verbal phenomenon, I think that is just a symptom of human brain function. Only a small amount of processing is conscious verbalisation, so you will need to talk about new things while your subconscious processes other ones. As for online, I think the idea of threads is obviously antithetical to the concept of linear discussion. When you organise things as a tree, you present the many branches as though each is a valid target for a new entry. If you want things to be discussed linearly, you must present that discussion linearly. This linear discussion is feasible only in text, as you have time to think something over before verbalising it.
• worldsayshi 2y ago
  I like the concept. What I would want to see is a clear path to reaching consensus documents. Comments-upon-comments makes it hard to get an idea of what the overall consensus is. You pretty much need to read all of it and explore every comment thread to understand what are the generally agreed parts and what are the more controversial takes(?). Maybe some hybrid between this and Wikipedia?
  • glassofbees 2y ago
    You could maybe achieve that with this design if a summary could be set for resolved discussions and shown at a higher level (eg. when hovering over the source text of a thread). Having the ability to differentiate between a resolved, useful thread and a resolved but ultimately unnecessary thread might also help avoid noise.
    • worldsayshi 2y ago
      Yeah exactly, it would be interesting to see a concept where the center piece is a consensus document where you could hide/show sections that are more or less controversial. Instead of leaving comments you propose changes, sort of wiki style. But to facilitate a higher level of difference of opinion, changes should have some mechanism for validation against consensus. And controversial changes should not be discarded but instead folded away in a linked comment-like. Then there also needs to be a mechanism for working towards succinctness.
      • anandbaburajan 2y ago
        Interesting, will explore more.
• windowshopping 2y ago
  Did anyone else find this post confusing? To me this looks like a sideways change, not a forward one.
  • Jerrrry 2y ago
    hmm, almost like how complex discussions work, instead of meandering trains of impulsive thought
    • windowshopping 2y ago
      What? I question your decision with this comment to prioritize condescension and sarcasm over making a clear point.
      • Jerrrry 2y ago
        I questioned your genuineness; given the context of the topic and the your orthogonal figurative of speech used to describe the issues with the article. If the meta-pun was incidental, apologies. This is why HN discourages puns or insubstantial jokes, as it impedes the benefit of doubt when attempting good faith discussions.
        • windowshopping 2y ago
          The pun didn't even occur to me. I wish I was that clever. God that would've been great.
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    Can you share what exactly you mean by a sideways change and a forward change, in this context? Thanks!
• graypegg 2y ago
  One thing that would be nice to add to the "concluded" status would be a updated version of the highlighted text that started that thread. Probably the old version striked out, and some conclusion appended after it, that way you don't even have to open the thread.
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    Good idea.
• durandal1 2y ago
  We're now back to email threads again it seems. (This is not the criticism it might seem, I miss the days of long-form proposals discussed through email, it promotes a kind of thinking that Slack etc doesn't).
  • hathawsh 2y ago
    Personally, I liked it when email threads followed the Usenet "laws". https://jkorpela.fi/usenet/laws.html https://jkorpela.fi/usenet/laws.html Most of the best discussions I've had online followed those rules. (OTOH, those rules are written tongue-in-cheek and not likely to be understood well by most newcomers.)
    • anandbaburajan 2y ago
      Thanks for sharing the laws!
• Jerrrry 2y ago
  It's how comments are ranked, and displayed based on "rank" >couldn't* care less >my..."troll metric" / rage bait/"le reddit quantification", formalized as a response's comment's conversational entropy divided by parent comment length, this is a fantastic comment. > >Pure, distilled, thought provocation.
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    I didn't get you. What is how comments are ranked?
    • Jerrrry 2y ago
      Short small comments that provoke pages of thoughtful discussion should be ranked higher than dumb punny one-liner quips or distracting detouring near-suspicious detoured astroturfed irrelevant conversations that often derail important topics. There should be more than one dimensionality to ranking a comment just like slashdot had. Downvoting a comment to disagree with it is such a ingrained unfortunate consequence that down votes should actually count more than up votes and all ranking of comments should be by "controversial". Spam is spam, including "le reddit" humor. A rank of a comment should be at least somewhat indicative of the the substance of the comment in relation to a point being made... Not whether or not an uncontributing lurker thinks a comment is funny or politically agreeable. There used to be a unspoken rule that you don't downvote without at least mentioning why. We all know why that went away and we can't say why, But we can think of how to prevent it for the next intellectual chamber we would like inhabit to prevent from it echoing so much we can no longer hear the new ideas. My (personally) most "provoking" of a comment was: >Whataboutism is whataboutism The other half is presentation. Collapsible comment trees seem good until I hijack every top reply and all others are minimized or top detached visually to be sequitur. I fear these near-obvious improvements are features, not bugs.
• patrickmay 2y ago
  This seems similar to the good-old-days Usenet with threaded readers that showed only new posts and a culture of interspersing responses (with much scolding of people who top posted). I'd love to see something like this that works more generally. I suspect it might need a more graph-like structure akin to mind maps.
• solardev 2y ago
  This feels a lot like Google Docs's commenting system, and seems to have the same issue in that it requires a lot of clicks to open each side thread one at a time. It's hard to "finish" digesting a series of replies at once. I think I'd prefer Discourse's current linear format, where all new replies are stacked at the bottom (but ideally with a quoted snippet for context). It makes catching up on updates easier, since you just keep scrolling and reading like any other document. IMO it often isn't super useful to go through each individual comment piecemeal unless you're working on a document together (ie tracking changes and commenting on them). Otherwise, being able to read through several comments at once and THEN replying to the whole of them in a summary can save everyone time. It's the infinite back and forth on every minor point that makes long form discussion impossible to track. That's the sort of thing that probably IS better dealt with in real time, over Slack or a call, and then summarized briefly back in the main convo. You don't need to have every sentence recorded in the main convo, just something like "Re: point 4, after talking it through with Joe and Jane, we all agreed it would be best to use blah blah".
  • kaycebasques 2y ago
    > This feels a lot like Google Docs's commenting system This was my first impression as well. The summary tree of replies to a thread seems like a possible improvement over Google Docs but the basic interaction workflow seems the same as Google Docs. Perhaps there is more innovation to be had by looking at the various specs for webpage annotation systems that have been proposed over the years?
  • exclipy 2y ago
    You can't comment on comments in Google Docs.
    • g8oz 2y ago
      Not true: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/65129?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop https://support.google.com/docs/answer/65129?hl=en&co=GENIE....
• amflare 2y ago
  Super cool. I've been thinking about building something like this for years. I have a background in debate, and the inability to "flow" complex discussion in any sort of digital format has always bothered me. I'm excited to try this out.
  • jjmarr 2y ago
    As someone else who is currently into debate, I'll probably use this for flowing in the near-future. It's interesting that most people view debate as "who can make flashier speeches?" when the skills are more so about tracking and participating in very lengthy discussions. I never fully grasped just how hard it is to understand and respond to what other people say until I got smoked by people who do it competitively.
    • anandbaburajan 2y ago
      Curious to know what you two think about Kialo. It's built for debates. CQ2 can be used for debates but it's really for complex discussions.
• dontdieych 2y ago
  Thought arrow keys would work. :D
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    Keyboard shortcuts coming soon! :D Also, curious to know where exactly you wanted to use arrow keys: moving horizontally between threads?
    • dontdieych 2y ago
      Yes sure.
• James_K 2y ago
  As much as they have a bad reputation, I think the image board style of comments is the best for these kinds of discussions. Each post has a unique ID, and you can insert links to other posts in the text of your post. Then each post is given a set of back-links showing all posts that quote it. In this way, posts form a hyperlinked network that you can traverse relatively easily, while also being displayed in chronological order. I've found this quite effective for long-form discussion. My only complaint would be that structure is needlessly limited. It would be better if posts simply formed a connected graph of content which you could ask the website to present in arbitrary ways. This project reminds me a lot of Xanadu in its layout. I don't really think this complex of an interface is necessary. In fact, it might get in the way of productive discussion. I find that the constraints on other mediums (character limits, reply depth, etc.) often aid clarity. The transmission of information between people is fundamentally linear, and so you are pretty much always just going to be composing short essays and exchanging them as the basis of any real discussion. Complicated features seem like they would obstruct this.
  • basch 2y ago
    Despite all the attempts to improve upon the basics, hyperlinks really are better than almost everything that’s come after them.
    • hypercube33 2y ago
      HyperCards need to make a comeback
    • TeMPOraL 2y ago
      Yes, people just need to embrace the directed graph nature of hyperlinks, instead of desperately trying to flatten the graph into a tree or a sequence (chronological or otherwise). We shouldn't be too surprised it's hard to have complex discussions with modern tools, when those tools removed the possibility of such discussions at structural level.
  • stainablesteel 2y ago
    a locally ran reddit-like forum would do wonders for any large or small company it basically takes the task of organizing and just turns it into a format
• hollerith 2y ago
  I spent 5 minutes on https://cq2.co/app/demo https://cq2.co/app/demo and failed to figure out how to navigate.
  • James_K 2y ago
    Having tried the demo, I can now say that it is a very confusing way to lay out content.
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    Curious to know what exactly wasn't clear. One just needs to click on the highlighted texts to open threads and scroll left/right as needed.
• zbentley 2y ago
  I quite like this for the niche of "medium to slow reply rates" + "larger posts" + "participants who are willing to thoughtfully participate in structure" + "participants interested in discourse" (that is, people who want to record their fully formed thoughts in a thread, or who want to structure persuasive arguments, rather than casual conversation or sniping). In other words, ideal for dueling essayists, technical RFC documents, or professional/academic debates. I see there as being 1-2 additional tricky problems to solve for something like this (other than ironing out UX kinks in the implementation, of which there are many--e.g. visual signifiers for overlapping thread sources outside of tree mode; a tree mode that allows users to browse responses without manually expanding things; making "conclude" meaningful): The first is optional, but I think it would be valuable: in many contexts, discussion and collaborative writing overlap substantially--often more than they don't. It would be interesting to see how the notion of addressing/concluding threads could be tied to changes in the document. E.g. a thread for "I'm onboard with this proposal if we alter the paragraph this is rooted at to contain X because Y" -> "If it gets you onboard, I'm happy to make this change, how about <proposed rephrase>" -> approval/conclusion causes the document to be updated and the thread archived. While that's technically not hard to add, the question is whether bringing in those aspects of mutation/collaborative editing would dilute the utility of the discussion layer, resulting in a shitty Google Docs/shitty Discourse combo, rather than a single-purpose Discourse-but-better application. The second problem I see isn't optional: thread topology needs to be mutable somehow. In addition to all the valid criticisms of forum/Slack/email-thread discussion formats, any significantly-sized discussion of a complex root document inevitably develops redundancies. You end up with Slack (or whatever) threads cross-linking to other threads ("as I said over here, <content that either may be invalidated with time or which breaks user flow to navigate to another discussion location>"). That leads to significant confusion, and more than a few cases of people making decisions based on stale information as the cross-references get more complicated. Sure, ideally everyone would root discussions at the single most relevant point of their parent content, and new contributors would carefully browse the existing tree to ensure that their contributions were on both the freshest and most germane leaf. But that's never going to happen in practice, so a tool like CQ2 needs some way to rearrange (or embed-with-live-updating, or make rooted at multiple sources rather than one, or something...) discussion trees. I have no idea what this would look like UX-wise. The 4chan model solves the replies-that-are-relevant-to-multiple-places issue, but doesn't help with re-parenting/consolodation after the fact to make future readers' lives easier, nor does it deal with staleness issues caused by replies linking to intermediate posts on threads which changed consensus later on. Regardless, I think functionality like this (even if it were used infrequently, by curators or administrators) would make the difference between things like CQ2 being useful only for short-to-medium-lifespan discussions with small numbers of participants, and being useful for discussions that stand as long-lived artifacts on their own.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• baxtr 2y ago
  Instead of a long post like that I wished they had a realistic example I could experiment with.
  • FelipeCortez 2y ago
    There's a "Try demo discussion" button on the header. Leads to https://cq2.co/app/demo https://cq2.co/app/demo
    • baxtr 2y ago
      I tried that and got CQ2 is not optimized for mobile use. Please try on a desktop or laptop. Go back to homepage
      • sokoloff 2y ago
        It seems possible that optimizing for desktop/pessimizing for mobile might be an important aspect of having effective discussion on complex topics. It will hurt their initial adoption, but might help the product.
        • amadeuspagel 2y ago
          The most important aspect of having effective discussions is reading what other people say, and people are more likely to have the patience to do that when they're on mobile and have nothing better do, rather then being on desktop and supposed to work.
          • sokoloff 2y ago
            I think the mindset of "participating effectively in complex [work] discussion is not an inherent part of your work" is exactly what desktop-only is concretely pushing back against.
            • anandbaburajan 2y ago
• agambrahma 2y ago
  This is something RoamResearch is squarely a good fit for. It's very useful for personal capture (with digressions etc) but also handles the "multi-player" case if needed.
  • agambrahma 2y ago
    ... and versions etc too
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    I like Roam Research too! However, it's not a tool for complex discussions.
• hyperluz 2y ago
  I think those investing efforts and time developing participatory democracy systems, are trying to solve these kind of communication and reasoning problems. Examples: https://www.noemamag.com/tomorrows-democracy-is-open-source/ https://www.noemamag.com/tomorrows-democracy-is-open-source/ and decidim.org
  • __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
    I'd like to work on something like these, and I didn't know about them--thanks for sharing. But I don't think the web has the right structure for an app like this. (Decidim seems to be a web app. It's hard to find information about this "Open Insight" thing they're talking about, presumably it is too?) If you're using the web, somebody controls the server and the others have to trust that person to not abuse their role. It's not exactly primed for democracy. Blockchains aren't quite right either. You solve the untrustworthy admin problem but you've got this really strong notion of THE official record, which only some people are going to have the ability to update, and that will be used by the powerful at the expense of the weak. Whatever the right structure is, I think it's partition tolerant. Any party needs to be able to disconnect themselves from any other party such that: - everything not reliant on that trust edge still works (the web would struggle with this) - the untrusted party has no ability to censor the revoker, even if they're well trusted by the others (blockchains will struggle with this) I've been tossing around ideas for what the ideal protocol would look like. SSB is the closest thing I can think of to compare it to, but nothing about it feels very solid yet.
    • hyperluz 2y ago
      You're welcome and I'm glad you appreciated. Also, thank you for your insights. About "Open Insight", I think it's not so open at the moment, since I couldn't find any kind of code repository. Maybe it is at an early design phase. Decidim.org is made with Ruby on Rails (good for fast prototyping, but a questionable choice for a critical system, IMHO).
    • aspenmayer 2y ago
      Have you heard of Veilid? It’s sort of envisioned as a framework for building encrypted distributed/federated apps. It’s early days and in active development, but the idea and goals of it remind me of the issues you raised. https://veilid.com/ https://veilid.com/ https://gitlab.com/veilid/veilid https://gitlab.com/veilid/veilid DEF CON 31 - The Internals of Veilid, a New Decentralized Application Framework - DilDog, Medus4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb1lKscAMDQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb1lKscAMDQ An Introduction to Veilid, by Christien Rioux - Rust Linz November 2023 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h288gZTjJOM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h288gZTjJOM There’s also Willow Protocol, which is sometimes compared to SSB and Veilid, but I don’t know as much about it. https://willowprotocol.org/ https://willowprotocol.org/ Comparison to Other Protocols https://willowprotocol.org/more/compare/index.html#willow_compared https://willowprotocol.org/more/compare/index.html#willow_co... Edit: Veilid, So easy a Teenager Can Do It! - Bianca Lewis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BfxIGD6Xno&t=362s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BfxIGD6Xno&t=362s
• danjl 2y ago
  Visuals are the big missing piece. Any text-based discussion will build different visions in each reader's head. Often, everyone agrees on the text description, and then, when a designer draws a picture, everyone disagrees because they weren't really aligned, they all assumed everyone shared their own personal vision. I love the concept of building a better way of discussing things asynchronously, but I would put visuals (images, videos, diagrams) at the center of that forum and overcome the biggest issue with visuals -- that they are often hard to make for many people. All the mentioned alternatives tie comments to a particular user and relate comments (responses) to other comments. Instead, the conversation could be focused on the topic of discussion, which is often best described as a set of visuals describing the concept. Rather than responding to comments, you could organize comments around the associated component of the problem as it is described visually. This would allow multiple individuals to support a concept, rather than just amplifying or criticizing a particular user's comment. This might even help avoid defensive behavior since the problem is the focus rather than a particular person's comment.
  • noiv 2y ago
    I think when a group wants to build something you’re right - images help, but when you want to make a group build something text is often enough.
  • danjl 2y ago
    Heh, perhaps you could use the text comments to constantly update a visual description generated by AI? That way, nobody needs to make a drawing. Conversely, nobody has direct control over the visuals. I envision a UI where people type their comment into a text box, that comment is sent to the server which is constantly updating the "visuals that describe the idea". Each client updates their UI with the new visuals along with providing some way of attaching all the comments to the visual images/videos/diagrams. IOW, the AI-generated visuals are the center of the client UI, rather than just a scrolling tape of comments. Clients can then navigate the discussion by diving into different components of the discussion. Maybe there's even an AI-generated summary of some sort. Essentially, the AI is playing the role of a Designer drawing pictures in a side channel and a smart assistant who is constantly updating a summary abstract.
• SamBam 2y ago
  I've wanted to create something like this for a long time. I've always wanted a threaded system where you can respond to a single line of text. One thing I wonder is how this can best be extended to argumentative discourses where much of the discussion is a dispute of facts. Of course you could do that with this, but it won't be clear looking at the comment tree whether people agree on what facts, if any, are correct. I wonder if this could be extended (or have a mode) that requires consensus on whether a thread is concluded (instead of one person deciding), which could be as simple as keeping the current UI but allowing the people the option to re-open threads; and the ability to attach summary statements to threads which percolate up to the thread's branch point.
  • photonthug 2y ago
    > One thing I wonder is how this can best be extended to argumentative discourses where much of the discussion is a dispute of facts. This is what I always think about when the topic of structured argument/discussion comes up, but everyone wants to focus on aspects of the threading. We are still totally missing a n obvious layer or organization, such as splitting sub comments into categories like disputes-parent and supports-parent and asks-clarification and elaborates-parent. We’re missing flags for ad-hom and logical fallacies and all the nuance of discussion has degenerated into up/down votes . And we are missing the ability to collapse or zip up any finished meandering paths once there is consensus/clarity on the subtopic. Since all we do is debate bullshit on the internet it’s surprising that we’re still so disorganized and ineffective at it! There’s definitely a sweet spot somewhere between this baby talk that we’re all engaged in and the rigors of things like lawyery jargon / math / Loglan. But we’re not even close yet.
• flemhans 2y ago
  MacSOUP had the best visualization of threads.
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    Interesting, can you send a link to a pic? I haven't used it and can't seem to find the visualization on Google.
• layer8 2y ago
  > we started searching for a tool specifically built for complex discussions. We found none This was basically solved in Usenet, more specifically, in news reader software. You had a clearly arranged threaded view (you could see the thread structure of as many as 50 postings on a single screen), with unread threads and unread postings highlighted, and pressing Tab jumped to the next unread posting. Unread status was per posting/comment, not by time. Many more conveniences for quick navigation, filtering, and so on. All newer discussion platforms have been a step back in terms of efficiency of use and ability for deep, long running discussions. Initially due to web browser limitations (though nowadays that shouldn’t be much of a problem anymore), and later due to mobile touch interfaces (still poses some difficulties).
  • shsbdncudx 2y ago
    You’re right. We shouldn’t try to improve what we are doing now.
    • layer8 2y ago
      I’m saying it’s worth looking into what worked in the past, and why. It’s not uncharted territory.
  • loceng 2y ago
    So why do you think Usenet is not the mainstream status quo for conversations then?
    • layer8 2y ago
      Usenet died due to spam. Newsgroups were unmoderated by default, and moderation wasn’t built into the protocol. Then PHP web forums took over because they were discoverable by web search and only required the web browser that you had anyway. They also added support for popular features like posting images and using emoticons graphics, instead of only text (though the latter hasn’t hurt HN).
      • 2y ago
• micromacrofoot 2y ago
  I find that as soon as you introduce threads as a form of organization, you've already lost the plot with 75% of users. One may argue that Facebook has threads, but I don't actually think people know how to use them. They simply click reply, say their piece, and then it's lost forever. They have no concept of structure.
  • projektfu 2y ago
    I don't think Facebook knows how to use them, as it typically hides most of the comments under a thread and picks out a couple irrelevant ones without their context.
    • micromacrofoot 2y ago
      I suspect that's intentional and they're using them to show things you'd likely reply to... and then just bury the rest. More of an opinion black hole than a discussion system.
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    CQ2 is for those 25% who like threads (and complex discussions).
• mathfailure 2y ago
  This is nearly perfect! I've been thinking of that problem and possible solutions as well, I am very glad you've done it. 1 loaded question though: who should have the rights for concluding threads? And a sub-question: should concluded threads be locked into read-only state? Or the other party should be able to continue the argument?
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    Interesting questions! > who should have the rights for concluding threads? Not sure, but I guess it could either be anyone or the person who created the thread or the person who was quoted or a specific moderator?. So probably a setting, depending on the team. > should concluded threads be locked into read-only state? That sounds a setting too.
• koito17 2y ago
  Pretty cool idea. It seems to address most of the UX issues I experience with BBS softwares. The only possible issue I see is density of information. People using mobile devices are not very motivated to read or write long sentences. This may have an impact on the overall quality of discussion. On my personal computer, this very post consumes two lines of text. On my iPhone, it consumes nearly half of the vertical space, thus appearing large (despite shallow content).
• Vox_Leone 2y ago
  I like it. Takes some effort to get used but it sure does remove much of the usual BB mess. Some breadcrumb style widget on the top to show which level you are on could also be nice.
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    We'll highlight the current open threads in the tree.
• sanitycheck 2y ago
  I quite like the "conclude thread" concept (though I couldn't get that button to do anything in the demo), and I'm one of those strange people who would like infinitely nested threads in Slack too... But the issue with threads is always that people who aren't involved the side-discussion generally never read them. I think it might be nice to have every thread "concluded" with a "result" (summary, outcome, to-do list, etc) which is then injected back into the parent where everybody will see it. It could be manual, or it could be semi-automated with a LLM - I'm not generally a fan but this seems like a reasonable use case. I'd ideally like all the nested threads to naturally turn into a single linear summary of everything important that was decided. The CQ2 thing also looks a bit too document-oriented, might be a good fit for a wiki or something like that but I think being able to open a thread for every single word is too fine-grained for a typical discussion.
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    > I couldn't get that button to do anything in the demo See how the button changes the comment box (but yes, need to improve it) > I'm one of those strange people who would like infinitely nested threads in Slack too You're not alone! > I think it might be nice to have every thread "concluded" with a "result" (summary, outcome, to-do list, etc) which is then injected back into the parent where everybody will see it Maybe instead of injecting into the parent, we could show it in the info box on hovering the text? > I'd ideally like all the nested threads to naturally turn into a single linear summary of everything important that was decided That would be beautiful! > a thread for every single word is too fine-grained We've seen threads being created out of two words
    • sanitycheck 2y ago
      > > I couldn't get that button to do anything in the demo > See how the button changes the comment box (but yes, need to improve it) Oh, I see, all the way down there! I really expected some sort of modal dialog or similar, but it actually does work, you're right. > You're not alone! I liked Google Wave too :( > Maybe instead of injecting into the parent, we could show it in the info box on hovering the text? Yeah, that'd definitely work with how the UI currently behaves. There's still a discoverability issue with a mouseover though, not to mention the usual problem with touch interfaces - when you get to supporting phones & tablets. > > a thread for every single word is too fine-grained > We've seen threads being created out of two words Oh, I'm sure you have! But was that a good thing to be doing? I feel like opening a discussion on a word or two is perfect for a document review tool, but for a conversation a sentence or even a paragraph would be the right unit. Then those thread summaries could appear inline too. If I think about the work related conversations I have, I'm literally the only person who posts a multi-paragraph essay I've composed outside slack/etc and checked/edited a few times. If other people were like me, this CQ2 approach would be great. However everybody else posts a sentence or two at a time as individual comments in a stream-of-consciousness manner, there's an immediate back-and-forth between 2-3 people in order to establish what's even really being talked about, and threads usually only appear when the main conversation has switched topics so people aren't chatting over each-other. There may be an element of "meeting people where they are" necessary with the product. :)
• jimmar 2y ago
  I worked in a department that facilitated group discussions with a custom platform based on group decision-making research. One of the killer features of our platform was anonymity. Truth could arise in group discussions when people were free to comment, upvote, etc, without fear of retribution, being accused of playing polities, or just going with the crowd. Seeing everybody's name tagged in every comment in cq2 lets me know that people with uncomfortable ideas may be hesitant to post them. So I wonder what type of questions would be appropriate for the c2q type of tracking.
  • epolanski 2y ago
    At some point no solution is perfect and anonymity brings its own set of issues. What you are describing is also a cultural more than a framework issue. People should not fear retribution for voicing their doubts and I'm lucky enough that none of my latest clients or previous employer had such an environment.
    • arichard123 2y ago
      I built a pseudo anonymous forum system for a client. He would give out logins, so he could monitor behaviour and participation. It was used when two large UK charities merged. Be then produced a report based on the ideas that came from it. I don't know if he took the idea further.
  • dcx 2y ago
    I'd love to hear more about your experience with this platform. Is there any public information about this platform or research? How did you guys manage the bad behaviors that come with anonymity, like trolling? I'm currently feeling out a little research project around the use of AI in improving group decision-making, specifically with the hope of improving our political systems. There are so few IRL case studies, it'd be great to have more intuition for this! (I'm @dch on twitter if you'd prefer to DM)
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• clcaev 2y ago
  Curating a discussion is not a technical problem, it’s just work. Observers may be more numerous than participants. Casual participants may outnumber intense ones. Intense contributors might not be the best curators.
• tunesmith 2y ago
  It's sort of like a tree, except that a node can have a main child and a connection of other children. That's neat, and another helpful step in organizing discussions. I've always wanted something that is more like a graph structure, where you can reply to multiple comments. So a node can have multiple parents.
• kikki 2y ago
  What does CQ2 mean? It's not an easy name to remember
  • cubefox 2y ago
    It presumably is pronounced "seek you too", a reference to the old instant messenger ICQ ("I seek you").
    • anandbaburajan 2y ago
      Haha, CQ2 doesn't mean anything, and no, it has nothing to do with ICQ.
• epolanski 2y ago
  I'm not a fan of threading outside chats to be honest. I'd rather have a moderated linear discussion with quotes/references.
• karaterobot 2y ago
  > We love complex, deep discussions. Well, that certainly does look deeply complex, so I have no reason to think it wouldn't create deeply complex discussions. Kidding aside, one thing I like about it is that it makes discussions start around specific snippets of a source text. That is to say, you begin a thread by selecting a piece of text. I am always very skeptical of top-level comments on HN that don't begin with a quote from the article being discussed—more often than not, I am suspicious that the person even read the text before commenting. That doesn't address how you'd have conversations around anything except a block of text. Videos, pictures, games or applications, etc. And they don't solve the toughest UX problem with this kind of pattern, which is how you treat overlapping excerpts: are they part of the same thread, or a new thread, and how do you define the boundary?
  • WA 2y ago
    But if a new reply doesn't address a single thing in the parent post, but merely the gist of it or adds an entirely new argument, there's no need to quote an exact sentence.
    • karaterobot 2y ago
      I'm talking about top level comments, which are essentially replies to the linked article itself; I assume you are too. If you're talking about replies to comments, I more or less agree with you. But to me, if a top level comment doesn't address a single thing in the parent article, it may not be necessary to post it in a thread about that article in the first place. Occasionally I see interesting, novel comments by people who probably haven't read the article, but the most common case is that I see tired retreads of ongoing culture wars, or warmed-over, extremely basic opinions. It's much more interesting to me when HN sometimes engages with a particular text rather than just opening the window and lets the rest of the (godforsaken) internet fly in. Or, that the commenter gives an opinion about something which is directly addressed in the article. Or, that the commenter has clearly misunderstood the point of the article because they've only read the headline, so they are wasting time arguing about something totally unrelated to it.
    • anandbaburajan 2y ago
• SkyMarshal 2y ago
  +100, this problem with popular chat services has irked me for a long time too. Anything that forces you to be constantly monitoring the chat stream synchronously is annoying. Some people can do that and still get deep work done, but I can't. I much prefer async chat, be it email or reddit/hn or some other attempts like Atlassian's erstwhile chat client. Always glad to see new attempts at solving this problem, thanks cq2 team! Will be following the project.
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    <3
• dojitza1 2y ago
  Tiny UI feedback, I could not figure out how to go back easily. It took me 1 minute to figure out it was the conclude discussion button on top
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    You meant going back to the first thread? If yes, you can just horizontally scroll (using trackpad or scroll wheel + shift). If not, go back where?
• danbmil99 2y ago
  I would be curious where Discord fits in. It's very popular on new open source projects.
  • chrisjj 2y ago
    Discord fits in perfectly to the last century. :)
  • solardev 2y ago
    It's pretty similar to Slack in this regard, no? Except that Discord's threads have more friction and take more clicks, if I remember correctly.
• naasking 2y ago
  You need threading and ability to crosslink posts, then each person should have a custom LLM that can summarize a thread for them in terms of: a) highest scores/most insightful points, b) common points of view that they would disagree with for balance, and c) points made that they agree with. Hopefully c) would discourage people from reposting the same points, b) might give people alternative perspectives, and a) is just good information or insight. I think quality discussion will come down to having less redundant discussion and rage posting.
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    Interesting, will explore more.
• boznz 2y ago
  Having a TLDR updated in real time at the top of every complex discussion would be ideal, I hate going in to a thread where there are 30+ pages I have to wade through that can be summarized in a paragraph or two and closed once it gets off topic.
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    TLDR seems like a good idea, will explore more, thanks.
• learn_more 2y ago
  The subject matter of the example used to demonstrate the interface is unnecessarily complex. It can be simple yet still stimulate a complex discussion. That would make it easier to understand the interface.
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    I agree. We have access to five complex discussions, and unfortunately, the ones with simple topics are not available to public.
• tony-allan 2y ago
  A great idea. Some personal thoughts: 1. I would like to be able to see all the comments from selected people (myself by default). 2. I would like to be able to un-conclude a thread for the fat-fingered among us. 3. As I hover over the document, if there are comments, I would love to see the comment count to judge the activity (or something to show hotspots -- now or over time). 4. I would like to be able to start a discussion with an external markdown file. 5. An API to access updates (including real-time changes) would be excellent. I've also dropped these in the Github comments.
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    Interesting ideas, will reply on GitHub!
• arnorhs 2y ago
  This is pretty interesting. Kind of like Reddit/hn comments in chat format. Esp interesting the part where you can start threads from quotes. Kudos. I'd like to point out the issue with these kinds of threaded discussions for non-complex discussions, including the simpler nodes of complex discussions. And that is that people often have a hard time figuring out which thread node to reply to in a more complicated discussion system. For the most part it's easy for engineer types, but most normies often find them confusing. But I really like the effort to highlight leaf nodes that you haven't read/seen etc. Discovery will probably be the hardest part when revisiting other people's discussions. When you are trying to find out what the most interesting relevant node of a discussion is. Really curious to see where this goes.
• rlhf 2y ago
  This might also apply to a situation where professors and students are rewriting papers.May save a lot of times.
• MichaelZuo 2y ago
  FYI This site somehow completely breaks Firefox 68.12 ESR, it's impossible to even scroll down with the keyboard and somehow hides the always visible scroll bar too.
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    Thanks! Will look into it.
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    Are you facing the issue on the blog post or the demo? Or can you open a issue for the same with a scrennshot on our GitHub? Thanks.
• BOOSTERHIDROGEN 2y ago
  Will it offer free self-hosted Docker in the future?
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    Yep.
• robviren 2y ago
  At this point I am convinced any meeting with more than six people is a poor way to have a complex discussion. Any more than that is a presentation. Good meeting note taking is a good first step followed by clear and concise action items. Review action items the next meeting and anything else of note from the last meeting. I have had good experience with Miro for facilitating anything that absolutely requires more people.
• WuxiFingerHold 2y ago
  This is brilliant and I hope every serious project switches off of Discord. I'm still traumatized by my first visit of Discord. I must (because I'm not a fan of Reddit as a company) say that Reddit is solving a similar problem already, but I think there's room for a more focused tool like this.
• fagrobot 2y ago
  exactly what we need. computers telling us how to talk like computers.
• Archie627 2y ago
  Kinda like the comments feature on Notion.
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    Not really.
• kalehelmet 2y ago
  Isn't this just Google Docs with extra steps?
• exclipy 2y ago
  But the Slack model is useful in its own way. Within a thread, you will see new posts at the bottom so you don't need to constantly scour all the threads to see new comments to it. Perhaps CQ2 could do with a toggle to switch between the new views (like https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments vs looking at HN threads), with some transition to help you keep your place when you toggle between them.
• nathell 2y ago
  Yes. I’ve been toying around with a similar idea and wanting to prototype it for a while, but somebody has beaten me to it. I’ll definitely keep an eye on this. One thing I’d add is specific prompting for a participant’s intent in discussion. _Why_ are you making this point? Is it to correct factual errors in someone else’s post? To convince someone to adopt your point of view? To seek better understanding of what the other person is saying? Just to show off? This is rarely stated explicitly, to a detriment in the quality of the discussion.
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    Wow, beautiful point! Very LessWrong-esque. Will definitely explore more.
• neon_me 2y ago
  Broken scroll on android/firefox. Complex things are only for apple kids :(
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    The blog post and homepage both are working fine for me on Firefox Android. Can you raise an issue on our GitHub? :D
• hooby 2y ago
  Having fruitful complex discussions and staying factual/rational, and not succumbing to impulsive answers, emotions and knee-jerk reactions, is a social/culture problem. And I'm not convinced that this types of problems can be solved with technology. What I'm trying to say is, that within a team with a good discussion culture, it will work, regardless of what tools you use. Even when the discussion is held in person. When your team has a bad discussion culture though, it doesn't really matter what tool or tech or discussion structure you use - you'll struggle with straw man arguments, fanboy logic, going in circles, people not listening/understanding each other, etc. To teach and foster a good discussion culture, you first and foremost need a genuine willingness of all participants to honestly try to improve. And this is a very interpersonal and soft-skill dependent thing to achieve. Some piece of software might help insofar, as that the change of format can help people to change their discussion style as well. It's easier to fall back into bad habits when discussion are "as usual". Shaking things up a bit, can make it easier for willing people to adopt new behavior...
• fragmede 2y ago
  This leans into threading harder, which makes ratholing and wild tangents happen and suck up all the air in the room. Going in the other direction is pol.is, which is used in vTaiwan to propose new laws. The mechanism there is twofold: > The first is that you cannot reply to comments. “If people can propose their ideas and comments but they cannot reply to each other, then it drastically reduces the motivation for trolls to troll,” > The second is that it uses the upvotes and downvotes to generate a kind of map of all the participants in the debate, clustering together people who have voted similarly. Although there may be hundreds or thousands of separate comments, like-minded groups rapidly emerge in this voting map, showing where there are divides and where there is consensus. People then naturally try to draft comments that will win votes from both sides of a divide, gradually eliminating the gaps. https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/08/21/240284/the-simple-but-ingenious-system-taiwan-uses-to-crowdsource-its-laws/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/08/21/240284/the-simpl...
  • BlueTemplar 2y ago
    Fascinating, thanks ! So Pol.is sounds to be the opposite of bubbles-forming social media (especially Twitter where it's hard to see past the previous/next post ?), on the contrary, it encourages consensus-building thanks to deliberately showing what people agree about ?
    • fragmede 2y ago
      And not going off on wild tangents or into the weeds. Like, I could comment on your use of the word bubbles to bring up the iPhone/Android blue/green bubble debate, which has nothing to do with the discussion, and then we're talking about that instead of the subject at hand.
• mihaic 2y ago
  I hate to be that guy, but over the years I've come to the conclusion that the only way to have good online conversations is to filter out 90% of the population, which is incapable of handling that complexity. This is not merely an IQ thing, but also requires self-control, empathy, effort and good technique in communication. Users that have those qualities can get by with a regular forum. The only marginal situation is users that almost fit this description, where better UX such as what this or Google Wave, can make a difference.
  • people_skills 2y ago
    How do you filter? I.e. this sounds good, I'd like more actionable advice on this. I've noticed that we have started migrating more often than previously. Slashdot, some subreddits, now hackernews... It's becoming increasingly harder to identify any particular platform with potentially more interesting discussions.
  • freilanzer 2y ago
    I think an enhanced forum with filters and graphs would be good. Give me all replies to this post I'm interested in and all following replies as well. Visualise the thread as a graph, so that I can easily follow the branches that are relevant to me. Something like Obsidian maybe? Classic forums are exhausting if dozens of people talk in parallel.
  • heresie-dabord 2y ago
    > the only way to have good online conversations is to filter out 90% of the population Moderation is not an anti-pattern, but trying to do it at scale without robust tools and strong identity management is destined to fail. The real anti-pattern in communication is allowing destructive behaviour to undermine the discussion. So, to re-state your point: The only way to have good online conversations is to restrict participation to people who are actively willing to discuss, to learn, and to commit to making a constructive contribution. This implies strong identity management and moderation.
• boxed 2y ago
  I built a forum in the very late 1990s to early 2006s that was threaded, topical, but most importantly kept extremely good track of what was unread. This to me is the key to structured discussions.
• g8oz 2y ago
  A system that encoded the rules of a parliamentary democracy in it's logic and interface might work.
  • RugnirViking 2y ago
    The rules of parlimentary democracy primarily seems to be a way to reduce the whims of a great number of people to a small number of people in a room talking. The issue is that building consensus or even giving everyone a fair chance to air their views in a group of 20+ people is EXHAUSTING. Have you ever been to any local politics groups where there are more than about 20 in a room? a meeting to decide what to have for lunch can take 3+ hours. It has its perks too, and its a lot faster when everyone gets to know each other and feels that they are known, then they dont have to repeatedly restate their points every time. I guess what im saying is its a system very much built around the analog practicalities of speaking with physical people in a physical room. I think we can do better with the internet
    • g8oz 2y ago
      All good points. I'm thinking however of a system that didn't just replicate the parliament itself, but also aspects like riding associations and constituent hours. That way the many people can contribute but at different "levels". It's true that actual decision making would only happen at the "parliament" level. I'm thinking of socio-political discussion and decision making.
• k__ 2y ago
  Half-OT: Can LLMs catch logic fallacies and rhetorical tricks?
• baby 2y ago
  Doesn’t work for mobile. Tells me everything I need to know.
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    We'll be adding mobile support soon.
• liotier 2y ago
  Serious question: what is wrong with HN/Old Reddit style ? In my experience, that system manned by competent moderators delivers satisfactory discussion.
  • eyeundersand 2y ago
    I also have this question. Moreover, the presumption with "complex" discussions is that the participants will seek to engage despite (relatively) small barriers, which presents (imo) an existential challenge to this solution.
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    https://blog.codinghorror.com/web-discussions-flat-by-design/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/web-discussions-flat-by-design...
    • liotier 2y ago
      Indeed, threaded demands more effort from the user, hence why I usually push Discourse for casual communities - flat works better there. But here we are talking about "complex discussions", for which flat is frustrating. Market segmentation !
• andsoitis 2y ago
  Communication is more than reading and writing words and sentences. I would distinguish between complex discussions and discussions about complex topics.
• cat_plus_plus 2y ago
  In person, with a small group of people who naturally like each other enough to want to be helpful while keeping anyone senior enough to be arrogant out. That's how you get a year worth of work done in a month.
  • ozim 2y ago
    Doesn't have to be in person but small group who like each other and want to be helpful would work the same IRL on Slack or whatever else. There is no technical solution that solves that.
• DerSaidin 2y ago
  > we started searching for a tool specifically built for complex discussions. We found none What about: https://www.kialo.com/ https://www.kialo.com/
  • manx 2y ago
    Or the almost 200 other tools and experiments: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wQShF0J3lGmIFACTvt5FLQWnKc1YdRaaCEDvRJlcUT8/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wQShF0J3lGmIFACTvt5F... It's a difficult but important problem to solve and we need more people in this space.
    • anandbaburajan 2y ago
      That's an interesting list, will explore, thanks!
  • anandbaburajan 2y ago
    Kialo is for debates, not for complex discussions.
• ol_ivier 2y ago
  [dead]
• dakial1 2y ago
  Wouldn’t AI help with this? Because complex discussions usually get more complex when multiple sub threads discussing the same topic of the discussion are opened in parallel so you get a disconnected and fragmented chat. Ai could help by identifying that a new subthread is discussing a theme that already has an opened thread and direct the user writing the new thread there to participate in that discussion (by moving the post to the right part of the thread tree) HN would certainly benefit from this.
• Slava_Propanei 2y ago
  [dead]