4 ms·

The downside with reddit-/hn-style comment is that, while they provide a superior UI for discussions, the liveliness of the discussions have a shelf life of a d

The downside with reddit-/hn-style comment is that, while they provide a superior UI for discussions, the liveliness of the discussions have a shelf life of a day. It makes it's hard to get a high quality discussion about new/breaking topics. What I mean is that, for new products, the threads that get the greatest discussion liquidity are those where not a single person knows a thing about it. So you'll get hundreds to thousands of comments that don't have a clue. In this world, influence concentrates around people with pre-release access to these products. In the HN/Reddit paradigm, how do people impart their experiences with a model like Fable? You could submit a new blog post and some people will comment on that to discuss their experiences. You could do an Ask HN but those don't get much traction. Old style forums were a pain in the butt to read but they were better for focused discussion over time.

SturgeonsLaw 3mo ago
Forums handled this by bumping old threads to the top when a new comment was added. This post sorting method could play nicely with tree style comments
- mavhc 3mo ago
  Bring back nntp
tpoacher 3mo ago
I agree for the most part, though it's worth pointing out that HN specifically has a mitigating characteristic in this case, which is that repeat posts are not moderated away, and are in fact encouraged. Case in point, one if today's top posts is on knoppix. Definitely not early adopter material! :) I agree more generally though. While I understand the benefits of a 14day response window, it really does destroy the ability to find a thread that is useful in a more anachronistic manner.
21asdffdsa12 3mo ago
Could you transcribe and condense fleeting discussions into the forum shape?
Findecanor 3mo ago
I'm on a few classic forums with threads that are over 20 years old, with a wealth of information about a topic. It is easier to revisit a thread and find new posts when posts are in chronological order. Most such forums remember the last post of your last visit, and takes you to after that position the next time you enter the thread. Tree views get tedious to revisit after they have reached a critical amount of posts, especially if subtrees can shift position from up/down-clicks. So threads with no revisits don't last as long.
- xeonmc 3mo ago
  I wonder if LLMs could be useful here for automatic node-graph generation of which replies addresses which train of discussion within a thread, and the user can click through said generate index to follow how a specific topic evolved.
  - Alpha3031 3mo ago
    I feel like the problem is more easily solved by adding a chronological view or filtering to an existing tree-based discussion (which RES can do for old.reddit) than attempting to automatically sort a discussion into subtopics. Many chronological forum software also can already display reply/replied-to chains (though perhaps not first-class in terms of UX) if people use the reply function, which is often an option.
    - postalcoder 3mo ago
      > I feel like the problem is more easily solved by adding a chronological view or filtering to an existing tree-based discussion I built this (both chronological view and new comment filtering) into the comments presentation on https://hcker.news https://hcker.news. Check it out, I’d be interested to know if there’s any way I can make it more useful.
- throw0101a 3mo ago
  > Tree views get tedious to revisit after they have reached a critical amount of posts, especially if subtrees can shift position from up/down-clicks. So threads with no revisits don't last as long. Tree/threaded views are an implementation detail: in e-mail clients you can toggle the threading offset view ("by converstaion"), e.g.: * https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/mail/view-email-messages-by-conversation-in-outlook https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/mail/view-email-... Is there any reason why flat/tree view could not be toggleable on a web site?
rightbyte 3mo ago
> the liveliness of the discussions have a shelf life of a day Yeah "bumping" of threads is a major feature lacking on algorithmic forums.
throw0101a 3mo ago
> Old style forums were a pain in the butt to read but they were better for focused discussion over time. News readers of the NNTP/Usenet days often had toggles on whether you wanted threading or not. Further they would update your .newsrc file to mark which articles in which newsgroups you have already read, so when you launched them after a few days only unread articles/threads would appear.
- jghn 3mo ago
  This. I only dealt with a non-threaded take on usenet for about 1 week in the early 90s.
- ourcat 3mo ago
  And we had kill files for spam.
schnitzelstoat 3mo ago
I wonder if a hybrid might work well - a Reddit/HN style system for comments, but a simple forum style method of post ranking by last activity. So if you make a comment on a post, the post goes to the top of the page. This could work for comment threads too - where the comment threads on the post are also ranked by last activity. It keeps the nice branching comment threads we've grown used to, but avoids having upvotes and downvotes and the opaque algorithm deciding what gets shown first (or at all).
- KajMagnus 3mo ago
  That's how GitHub discussion works :- ) (or did you know?) Look here: https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj/discussions/ https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj/discussions/ — by default, sorted by last activity. But you can also sort by newest, or by votes. For comment threads, look at e.g.: https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj/discussions/5509?sort=old https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj/discussions/5509?sort=old — sorted by time, by default. But you can also sort by upvotes. *** The forum software I'm developing, https://www.Talkyard.io https://www.Talkyard.io, is also threaded, and can sort by time or by votes. (Both discussion topics and replies.) F.ex. go here: https://forum.talkyard.io/-9qb49/solving-problem-first-comment-gets-all-upvotes https://forum.talkyard.io/-9qb49/solving-problem-first-comme... and scroll down to the replies section and click `Oldest first` to change order. In addition to oldest/newest/"best", you can sort top level comments by time descending, and deeper comments by time _ascending_ or by votes — creating a kind of "micro blog feed" where each top level comment is the most recent "micro blog post" — but replies don't have to share the same sort order. "Newest, then popular" and "Newest, then oldest" I call these sort orders. Also click the "Recent posts" in the upper right corner, to see the most recent comments sorted by time descending. *** Anyway. There's people who think the hybrid approach you mentioned is an good idea.
  - schnitzelstoat 3mo ago
    Thanks! I don't tend to use the GitHub discussion very much (just commenting on a few Issues) so I didn't know! The Talkyard example is interesting - how does it differ to the algorithms Reddit uses to sort by "Best" or "Hot" when looking at comments (I think Best is the default now too, not Top, so presumably it takes recency etc. into account somehow).
II2II 3mo ago
> The downside with reddit-/hn-style comment is that, while they provide a superior UI for discussions, the liveliness of the discussions have a shelf life of a day. A big difference between Reddit/HN is the volume. You need threaded discussion because individual articles can receive as many responses in one day as most forums would accumulate on a single posting over the course of several years.
sailfast 3mo ago
Old style forums were better because fewer people were on them, there was no monetary incentive to contribute (you just cared) and the community wasn’t toxic. Reddit-style sites can also be this - you just need to build the right community. (This is very very hard) Anyway my hypothesis here is clearly the community is the value and not necessarily the method of posting.
andai 3mo ago
I'm reminded of this amusing comment by dang on this subject: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24215601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24215601 A bunch of people skim the article (or just the title), post hot takes, then there's responses to those, and so on...
- econ 3mo ago
  I had some hilarious moderation experiences by deleting all negative responses from topics specifically chosen attract negativity. People got so mad that they couldn't rub their poop on the conversation. I respond to their mails with some of the funniest trolling in my career. Meanwhile the conversations were all love and peace among the like minded.
goalieca 3mo ago
> the liveliness of the discussions have a shelf life of a day. Perhaps even worse. It’s really whatever was posted at that moment you loaded the page unless you are actively responding. There are features to show unread messages only but it becomes a mess. The flat forum posts are great and sub-conversations can always split off into its own thread. Spinning off us how we use slack after all.
y1n0 3mo ago
The shelf-life of a day is because of the abstract voting aspect. Old crappy forums used comments, vs an abstract notion, as a vote. This allowed for long running conversations. It did require stronger protections of posting rights though. If it seemed useful enough someone could make an HN app that sorted by activity, maybe weighted by a person’s karma.
shagie 3mo ago
That becomes a question of discoverability and the "what about bumping ancient threads". Consider trn and rn of old. I recall the first news reader that I used wasn't threaded and it was neigh incomprehensible unless you were following all the posts and what was going on. For smaller newsgroups, that was something that was possible. For larger ones, a flat structure was very difficult. Threaded news readers (while I can't find any for trn, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_%28newsreader%29#/media/File:Tin-threading.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_%28newsreader%29#/media/Fi... is old enough and shows the interface) was useful and captured the structure... and bumping old threads was something that provided discoverability for new comments on old. However, news readers had a lot of other features that Reddit and HN style comments don't have. I could plonk an entire post, or all the followups to a specific comment, or a specific person. Without the ability to provide personal moderation (arguably something lacking on HN and Reddit), the weighted to current activity to try to discourage comments on old posts is useful. They're ok with collapse and hide... but NNTP clients had much more that allowed it to support different types of discussions and never-ending comment trees. ... This also made them very difficult to search for content. I'd absolutely love a NNTP interface to HN. Without it, the interface that HN has (allowing collapsing of comment trees) and downranking old posts is useful. If you want to still find things that are active (rather than downranked), https://news.ycombinator.com/active https://news.ycombinator.com/active or https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments are useful for surfacing where people are commenting - even if it's days old.
botanrice 3mo ago
you make a good point on the discussion over time. I do miss that aspect of old forums, felt like you could have conversations as opposed to chats, in a way? It's unheard of for discussion to re-ignite on an old HN or Reddit post. Also gotta love the long-term discussions that happen with 3-4 people saying serious things and then one complete rando coming in dropping an absurd conspiracy theory while the rest of the convo continues around them xDD
jandrese 3mo ago
One thing I think Slashdot got right was capping the upvotes on a post to 5. This provided the desired effect of letting quality content sit on top of the discussion without turning it into a game. They also were fairly stingy with the letting people upvote and especially downvote content. Plus there was a whole meta-moderation system that may or may not have made an impact, I was never sure about that part.

SturgeonsLaw 3mo ago

Forums handled this by bumping old threads to the top when a new comment was added. This post sorting method could play nicely with tree style comments

mavhc 3mo ago
Bring back nntp

tpoacher 3mo ago

I agree for the most part, though it's worth pointing out that HN specifically has a mitigating characteristic in this case, which is that repeat posts are not moderated away, and are in fact encouraged. Case in point, one if today's top posts is on knoppix. Definitely not early adopter material! :) I agree more generally though. While I understand the benefits of a 14day response window, it really does destroy the ability to find a thread that is useful in a more anachronistic manner.

21asdffdsa12 3mo ago

Could you transcribe and condense fleeting discussions into the forum shape?

Findecanor 3mo ago

I'm on a few classic forums with threads that are over 20 years old, with a wealth of information about a topic. It is easier to revisit a thread and find new posts when posts are in chronological order. Most such forums remember the last post of your last visit, and takes you to after that position the next time you enter the thread. Tree views get tedious to revisit after they have reached a critical amount of posts, especially if subtrees can shift position from up/down-clicks. So threads with no revisits don't last as long.

xeonmc 3mo ago
I wonder if LLMs could be useful here for automatic node-graph generation of which replies addresses which train of discussion within a thread, and the user can click through said generate index to follow how a specific topic evolved.
- Alpha3031 3mo ago
  I feel like the problem is more easily solved by adding a chronological view or filtering to an existing tree-based discussion (which RES can do for old.reddit) than attempting to automatically sort a discussion into subtopics. Many chronological forum software also can already display reply/replied-to chains (though perhaps not first-class in terms of UX) if people use the reply function, which is often an option.
  - postalcoder 3mo ago
    > I feel like the problem is more easily solved by adding a chronological view or filtering to an existing tree-based discussion I built this (both chronological view and new comment filtering) into the comments presentation on https://hcker.news https://hcker.news. Check it out, I’d be interested to know if there’s any way I can make it more useful.
throw0101a 3mo ago
> Tree views get tedious to revisit after they have reached a critical amount of posts, especially if subtrees can shift position from up/down-clicks. So threads with no revisits don't last as long. Tree/threaded views are an implementation detail: in e-mail clients you can toggle the threading offset view ("by converstaion"), e.g.: * https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/mail/view-email-messages-by-conversation-in-outlook https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/mail/view-email-... Is there any reason why flat/tree view could not be toggleable on a web site?

rightbyte 3mo ago

> the liveliness of the discussions have a shelf life of a day Yeah "bumping" of threads is a major feature lacking on algorithmic forums.

throw0101a 3mo ago

> Old style forums were a pain in the butt to read but they were better for focused discussion over time. News readers of the NNTP/Usenet days often had toggles on whether you wanted threading or not. Further they would update your .newsrc file to mark which articles in which newsgroups you have already read, so when you launched them after a few days only unread articles/threads would appear.

jghn 3mo ago
This. I only dealt with a non-threaded take on usenet for about 1 week in the early 90s.
ourcat 3mo ago
And we had kill files for spam.

schnitzelstoat 3mo ago

I wonder if a hybrid might work well - a Reddit/HN style system for comments, but a simple forum style method of post ranking by last activity. So if you make a comment on a post, the post goes to the top of the page. This could work for comment threads too - where the comment threads on the post are also ranked by last activity. It keeps the nice branching comment threads we've grown used to, but avoids having upvotes and downvotes and the opaque algorithm deciding what gets shown first (or at all).

KajMagnus 3mo ago
That's how GitHub discussion works :- ) (or did you know?) Look here: https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj/discussions/ https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj/discussions/ — by default, sorted by last activity. But you can also sort by newest, or by votes. For comment threads, look at e.g.: https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj/discussions/5509?sort=old https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj/discussions/5509?sort=old — sorted by time, by default. But you can also sort by upvotes. *** The forum software I'm developing, https://www.Talkyard.io https://www.Talkyard.io, is also threaded, and can sort by time or by votes. (Both discussion topics and replies.) F.ex. go here: https://forum.talkyard.io/-9qb49/solving-problem-first-comment-gets-all-upvotes https://forum.talkyard.io/-9qb49/solving-problem-first-comme... and scroll down to the replies section and click `Oldest first` to change order. In addition to oldest/newest/"best", you can sort top level comments by time descending, and deeper comments by time _ascending_ or by votes — creating a kind of "micro blog feed" where each top level comment is the most recent "micro blog post" — but replies don't have to share the same sort order. "Newest, then popular" and "Newest, then oldest" I call these sort orders. Also click the "Recent posts" in the upper right corner, to see the most recent comments sorted by time descending. *** Anyway. There's people who think the hybrid approach you mentioned is an good idea.
- schnitzelstoat 3mo ago
  Thanks! I don't tend to use the GitHub discussion very much (just commenting on a few Issues) so I didn't know! The Talkyard example is interesting - how does it differ to the algorithms Reddit uses to sort by "Best" or "Hot" when looking at comments (I think Best is the default now too, not Top, so presumably it takes recency etc. into account somehow).

II2II 3mo ago

> The downside with reddit-/hn-style comment is that, while they provide a superior UI for discussions, the liveliness of the discussions have a shelf life of a day. A big difference between Reddit/HN is the volume. You need threaded discussion because individual articles can receive as many responses in one day as most forums would accumulate on a single posting over the course of several years.

sailfast 3mo ago

Old style forums were better because fewer people were on them, there was no monetary incentive to contribute (you just cared) and the community wasn’t toxic. Reddit-style sites can also be this - you just need to build the right community. (This is very very hard) Anyway my hypothesis here is clearly the community is the value and not necessarily the method of posting.

andai 3mo ago

I'm reminded of this amusing comment by dang on this subject: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24215601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24215601 A bunch of people skim the article (or just the title), post hot takes, then there's responses to those, and so on...

econ 3mo ago
I had some hilarious moderation experiences by deleting all negative responses from topics specifically chosen attract negativity. People got so mad that they couldn't rub their poop on the conversation. I respond to their mails with some of the funniest trolling in my career. Meanwhile the conversations were all love and peace among the like minded.

goalieca 3mo ago

> the liveliness of the discussions have a shelf life of a day. Perhaps even worse. It’s really whatever was posted at that moment you loaded the page unless you are actively responding. There are features to show unread messages only but it becomes a mess. The flat forum posts are great and sub-conversations can always split off into its own thread. Spinning off us how we use slack after all.

y1n0 3mo ago

The shelf-life of a day is because of the abstract voting aspect. Old crappy forums used comments, vs an abstract notion, as a vote. This allowed for long running conversations. It did require stronger protections of posting rights though. If it seemed useful enough someone could make an HN app that sorted by activity, maybe weighted by a person’s karma.

shagie 3mo ago

That becomes a question of discoverability and the "what about bumping ancient threads". Consider trn and rn of old. I recall the first news reader that I used wasn't threaded and it was neigh incomprehensible unless you were following all the posts and what was going on. For smaller newsgroups, that was something that was possible. For larger ones, a flat structure was very difficult. Threaded news readers (while I can't find any for trn, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_%28newsreader%29#/media/File:Tin-threading.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_%28newsreader%29#/media/Fi... is old enough and shows the interface) was useful and captured the structure... and bumping old threads was something that provided discoverability for new comments on old. However, news readers had a lot of other features that Reddit and HN style comments don't have. I could plonk an entire post, or all the followups to a specific comment, or a specific person. Without the ability to provide personal moderation (arguably something lacking on HN and Reddit), the weighted to current activity to try to discourage comments on old posts is useful. They're ok with collapse and hide... but NNTP clients had much more that allowed it to support different types of discussions and never-ending comment trees. ... This also made them very difficult to search for content. I'd absolutely love a NNTP interface to HN. Without it, the interface that HN has (allowing collapsing of comment trees) and downranking old posts is useful. If you want to still find things that are active (rather than downranked), https://news.ycombinator.com/active https://news.ycombinator.com/active or https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments are useful for surfacing where people are commenting - even if it's days old.

botanrice 3mo ago

you make a good point on the discussion over time. I do miss that aspect of old forums, felt like you could have conversations as opposed to chats, in a way? It's unheard of for discussion to re-ignite on an old HN or Reddit post. Also gotta love the long-term discussions that happen with 3-4 people saying serious things and then one complete rando coming in dropping an absurd conspiracy theory while the rest of the convo continues around them xDD

jandrese 3mo ago

One thing I think Slashdot got right was capping the upvotes on a post to 5. This provided the desired effect of letting quality content sit on top of the discussion without turning it into a game. They also were fairly stingy with the letting people upvote and especially downvote content. Plus there was a whole meta-moderation system that may or may not have made an impact, I was never sure about that part.