4 ms·

If there are comments, you should thread them. Not Lifehacker-style, though.

by nx 18y ago

unalone 18y ago
I disagree: I don't thread them. Reason being, it kills linear conversation, and that's something I don't want. Linear conversation helps keep a strong conversation going. So on the site, there are two "commentesque" systems. There's one for the general critiques (the focus of my site), which don't get threaded because they're grouped by the user that made them. There's no discussion in those comments, or there's not much. The focus is on constructive, objective feedback. For the forum, we decided to go almost entirely minimal. A screenshot from the alpha can be found here: http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=f18vb&s=5 http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=f18vb&s=5 The idea is that we wanted to focus on back-and-forth talk. The three of us in that thread all knew each other on an older site of mine, so that's already established, but we want a feel of community. As in, instead of lurkers and posters, you've got a place where if you're new, you can talk to older users and become sort-of welcomed into things. You lose that with threads, because suddenly it's all-too-easy for a user to get completely ignored if they don't join one of the bigger threads.
- nx 18y ago
  Well, I like your point. The only problem I see with linear conversations is when the comments are too many to follow responses easily, things get really messy at that point and the very best one can do is jump around following links and trying to understand the dialog. And, you're right, if you don't join a popular thread in a threaded comment system, you will probably be ignored. But you won't if you're one of the first to post in that page, thus somehow making the oldest more relevant, and if you get lots of replies your comment will be seen by more people, which makes sense to me since it would be a hot topic. There is no perfect commenting system, I guess, but the big flaw in linear conversations is that replies are not emphasized and the relations between comments is easily lost. It would be useful when time is relevant. I would prefer a threaded system, sorted by rating as well, kind of what Reddit or HN has: the hottest, top-rated, most recent comments on the top; the oldest, lowest-rated, not-replied-to ones more likely to be ignored.

If there are comments, you should thread them. Not Lifehacker-style, though.

by nx 18y ago

If there are comments, you should thread them. Not Lifehacker-style, though.

I disagree: I don't thread them. Reason being, it kills linear conversation, and that's something I don't want. Linear conversation helps keep a strong conversation going. So on the site, there are two "commentesque" systems. There's one for the general critiques (the focus of my site), which don't get threaded because they're grouped by the user that made them. There's no discussion in those comments, or there's not much. The focus is on constructive, objective feedback. For the forum, we decided to go almost entirely minimal. A screenshot from the alpha can be found here: http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=f18vb&s=5 http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=f18vb&s=5 The idea is that we wanted to focus on back-and-forth talk. The three of us in that thread all knew each other on an older site of mine, so that's already established, but we want a feel of community. As in, instead of lurkers and posters, you've got a place where if you're new, you can talk to older users and become sort-of welcomed into things. You lose that with threads, because suddenly it's all-too-easy for a user to get completely ignored if they don't join one of the bigger threads.

nx 18y ago
Well, I like your point. The only problem I see with linear conversations is when the comments are too many to follow responses easily, things get really messy at that point and the very best one can do is jump around following links and trying to understand the dialog. And, you're right, if you don't join a popular thread in a threaded comment system, you will probably be ignored. But you won't if you're one of the first to post in that page, thus somehow making the oldest more relevant, and if you get lots of replies your comment will be seen by more people, which makes sense to me since it would be a hot topic. There is no perfect commenting system, I guess, but the big flaw in linear conversations is that replies are not emphasized and the relations between comments is easily lost. It would be useful when time is relevant. I would prefer a threaded system, sorted by rating as well, kind of what Reddit or HN has: the hottest, top-rated, most recent comments on the top; the oldest, lowest-rated, not-replied-to ones more likely to be ignored.