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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 r

by 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).

by stch2 14y ago

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).