3 ms·

I've never really liked nested conversations, personally.

by iends 14y ago

jacoblyles 14y ago
A linear forum compared to a nested forum is like cutting off part of your brain. You have to expend brain power sorting out multiple conversations occurring in the same sequence. The quoting mechanism is an attempt to unbreak the linear forum, but it's a kludge. Linear forums are a cacophony of conversations intermixed. Deep conversations die early on linear forums because they are too hard to follow. You will find more posts responding to the OP and fewer posts responding to each other. Linear forums are built for announcements or Q&A, not conversations.
- stch2 14y ago
  The downside is that it's nearly impossible to go back to a thread and continue where you left off. With a linear thread, you can go back to the last post you read and continue from there -- with a fully threaded forum, I basically get one pass at the comments and then can never view that page again without huge effort to reconstruct my position.
  - Androsynth 14y ago
    I think it would be possible if the forum tracked what you have viewed and then greyed out or made it noticeably different than what is new. local storage would be sufficient to store the viewed pages without cluttering up a db on the server.
    - cpsales 14y ago
      There is the hckrnews [1] browser extension that does exactly this for news.ycombinator.com. I believe the reddit enhancement suite also does this, but I've only heard about it since I don't use it. I do know, however, that reddit gold members get this functionality via the more-inefficient server-side magic. The coolest thing about the reddit gold implementation is that it allows you to select highlighting of comments from different times of past views so if you happened to visit but not read the new comments they're not wiped out on you. About the original topic of conversion, discourse, I think I really need to see the site without all the cruft before deciding much about it. As it is, it's far too busy for me. I really hate this trend of "modern" web development, but the developers have stated that it should be themeable by those who deploy it. Funny thing is, a couple ideas I've had myself about possible features of discussion forms appear to be present there but I dislike them already. Prime among this is the ability to spawn off a discussion thread from a main post to its own subpost. I always though that subthreads tend to get derailed to the point of needing to be a separate discussion. I think that what really matters is how the surrounding communities use such features. It being a playpen that is wiped every day, with users coming in to test features over and over might be painting my experience a bit. [1] http://hckrnews.com/about.html http://hckrnews.com/about.html
  - moe 14y ago
    nearly impossible to go back to a thread and continue where you left off We have the technology, we can do both! The page is drowning in useless javascript gimmickry anyway, it should be possible to add some actually useful javascript to seamlessly switch between linear, conversation and tree view. You know, to aid the user in his interaction with the content rather than fancy stylesheets and sliding widgets. The more I look at discourse the more it infuriates me. The complete disregard of time tested interfaces (Usenet and the authors own StackOverflow) just doesn't jive at all with their wild claims to "reinvent online discourse". Unless their idea of reinvention translates to repeating every mistake made in the past 30 years... What they did is unleash a terrible forum software that will undoubtedly be forced down the throat of a great many users for no reason other than it being "the next hip SV thing".
  - rplnt 14y ago
    You can only show new comments, highlight them, even view them in flat mode. Threaded forum naturally separates subtopics while flat forum is just a big mess. Also old subthreads naturally die so the new stuff is usually in the new nodes. And you can also just view subtrees to follow certain discussion. edit: In yesterday's discussion I posted some advantages of a discussion system based on tree structure https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5175660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5175660
  - lazyjones 14y ago
    > The downside is that it's nearly impossible to go back to a thread and continue where you left off False. In the early days, browser designers took care to use different link colors for visited/unvisited links (gasp!). Nowdays, in the age of fancy JS gimmicks and contrast-less design, we are overriding this functionality because it apparently looks better (if you don't see the extra information). Forums with diffent link colors for visited/unvisited posts and threading work pretty well. It's not to hard to implement something like this with JS (unless one wants all posts to be open/visible as default).
- Bockit 14y ago
  I find it a very different experience and have no trouble following discussions in linear threads. I find linear gets you more substantial discussions with multiple contributors all aware of one another.
- rohit89 14y ago
  In my experience, I've found that a linear forum works great when its strictly moderated. No off-topic posts, sometimes not even something tangentially related. The community also plays a huge role in maintaining the quality.
damncabbage 14y ago
But conversations are nested anyway. In real life you rarely have discussions with more than ten people at once. Even when you do, it's frustrating as you have to switch between topics instead of following the "threads" of the conversation. (And inevitably someone doesn't shut up and derails the conversation in a particular way.) So what do current systems do? * Go for broke, go full threading (eg. HN, Reddit, Usenet). * Ignore it (eg. phpBB). Just like real life, everything gets muddied, but you have far more people in the conversation that would be practical in reality. * Track it but try to hide it (eg. Twitter). Discussions have tree structures, but you can only have a flat view of them. You have to manually sift through replies to find the branching points and then trace it from there. For example, these are two discussion trees branching from the same conversation starter: https://twitter.com/lgarvey/status/279088834115940352 https://twitter.com/lgarvey/status/279088834115940352 https://twitter.com/nitecoder/status/279088173743747072 https://twitter.com/nitecoder/status/279088173743747072 In any case, I suspect Discourse's threading mostly stems from Jeff Atwood's dislike of threading: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/12/web-discussions-flat-by-design.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/12/web-discussions-fla...
- codinghorror 14y ago
  Ours is essentially the twitter model, with a few tweaks. I think a hybrid approach -- flat for reading, but limited expansions on demand for context -- is best.
dmsinger 14y ago
I don't care for nesting much either. While it may be more like real life one-on-one conversations, I find it more difficult to follow an entire thread and very hard to scan through. I can enjoy a segment, but that's one of the problems I see: it segments a conversation greatly. I think things stay more on topic with a flat discussion, and I discover things I would have missed in a threaded one. I'd love to see some innovation in the forums space, it's been a while. I still don't see it, but I'm hopeful.

I've never really liked nested conversations, personally.

by iends 14y ago

I've never really liked nested conversations, personally.

A linear forum compared to a nested forum is like cutting off part of your brain. You have to expend brain power sorting out multiple conversations occurring in the same sequence. The quoting mechanism is an attempt to unbreak the linear forum, but it's a kludge. Linear forums are a cacophony of conversations intermixed. Deep conversations die early on linear forums because they are too hard to follow. You will find more posts responding to the OP and fewer posts responding to each other. Linear forums are built for announcements or Q&A, not conversations.

stch2 14y ago
The downside is that it's nearly impossible to go back to a thread and continue where you left off. With a linear thread, you can go back to the last post you read and continue from there -- with a fully threaded forum, I basically get one pass at the comments and then can never view that page again without huge effort to reconstruct my position.
- Androsynth 14y ago
  I think it would be possible if the forum tracked what you have viewed and then greyed out or made it noticeably different than what is new. local storage would be sufficient to store the viewed pages without cluttering up a db on the server.
  - cpsales 14y ago
    There is the hckrnews [1] browser extension that does exactly this for news.ycombinator.com. I believe the reddit enhancement suite also does this, but I've only heard about it since I don't use it. I do know, however, that reddit gold members get this functionality via the more-inefficient server-side magic. The coolest thing about the reddit gold implementation is that it allows you to select highlighting of comments from different times of past views so if you happened to visit but not read the new comments they're not wiped out on you. About the original topic of conversion, discourse, I think I really need to see the site without all the cruft before deciding much about it. As it is, it's far too busy for me. I really hate this trend of "modern" web development, but the developers have stated that it should be themeable by those who deploy it. Funny thing is, a couple ideas I've had myself about possible features of discussion forms appear to be present there but I dislike them already. Prime among this is the ability to spawn off a discussion thread from a main post to its own subpost. I always though that subthreads tend to get derailed to the point of needing to be a separate discussion. I think that what really matters is how the surrounding communities use such features. It being a playpen that is wiped every day, with users coming in to test features over and over might be painting my experience a bit. [1] http://hckrnews.com/about.html http://hckrnews.com/about.html
- moe 14y ago
  nearly impossible to go back to a thread and continue where you left off We have the technology, we can do both! The page is drowning in useless javascript gimmickry anyway, it should be possible to add some actually useful javascript to seamlessly switch between linear, conversation and tree view. You know, to aid the user in his interaction with the content rather than fancy stylesheets and sliding widgets. The more I look at discourse the more it infuriates me. The complete disregard of time tested interfaces (Usenet and the authors own StackOverflow) just doesn't jive at all with their wild claims to "reinvent online discourse". Unless their idea of reinvention translates to repeating every mistake made in the past 30 years... What they did is unleash a terrible forum software that will undoubtedly be forced down the throat of a great many users for no reason other than it being "the next hip SV thing".
- rplnt 14y ago
  You can only show new comments, highlight them, even view them in flat mode. Threaded forum naturally separates subtopics while flat forum is just a big mess. Also old subthreads naturally die so the new stuff is usually in the new nodes. And you can also just view subtrees to follow certain discussion. edit: In yesterday's discussion I posted some advantages of a discussion system based on tree structure https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5175660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5175660
- lazyjones 14y ago
  > The downside is that it's nearly impossible to go back to a thread and continue where you left off False. In the early days, browser designers took care to use different link colors for visited/unvisited links (gasp!). Nowdays, in the age of fancy JS gimmicks and contrast-less design, we are overriding this functionality because it apparently looks better (if you don't see the extra information). Forums with diffent link colors for visited/unvisited posts and threading work pretty well. It's not to hard to implement something like this with JS (unless one wants all posts to be open/visible as default).
Bockit 14y ago
I find it a very different experience and have no trouble following discussions in linear threads. I find linear gets you more substantial discussions with multiple contributors all aware of one another.
rohit89 14y ago
In my experience, I've found that a linear forum works great when its strictly moderated. No off-topic posts, sometimes not even something tangentially related. The community also plays a huge role in maintaining the quality.

damncabbage 14y ago

But conversations are nested anyway. In real life you rarely have discussions with more than ten people at once. Even when you do, it's frustrating as you have to switch between topics instead of following the "threads" of the conversation. (And inevitably someone doesn't shut up and derails the conversation in a particular way.) So what do current systems do? * Go for broke, go full threading (eg. HN, Reddit, Usenet). * Ignore it (eg. phpBB). Just like real life, everything gets muddied, but you have far more people in the conversation that would be practical in reality. * Track it but try to hide it (eg. Twitter). Discussions have tree structures, but you can only have a flat view of them. You have to manually sift through replies to find the branching points and then trace it from there. For example, these are two discussion trees branching from the same conversation starter: https://twitter.com/lgarvey/status/279088834115940352 https://twitter.com/lgarvey/status/279088834115940352 https://twitter.com/nitecoder/status/279088173743747072 https://twitter.com/nitecoder/status/279088173743747072 In any case, I suspect Discourse's threading mostly stems from Jeff Atwood's dislike of threading: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/12/web-discussions-flat-by-design.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/12/web-discussions-fla...

codinghorror 14y ago
Ours is essentially the twitter model, with a few tweaks. I think a hybrid approach -- flat for reading, but limited expansions on demand for context -- is best.

dmsinger 14y ago

I don't care for nesting much either. While it may be more like real life one-on-one conversations, I find it more difficult to follow an entire thread and very hard to scan through. I can enjoy a segment, but that's one of the problems I see: it segments a conversation greatly. I think things stay more on topic with a flat discussion, and I discover things I would have missed in a threaded one. I'd love to see some innovation in the forums space, it's been a while. I still don't see it, but I'm hopeful.