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Flat forums are strictly worse than nested forums for in-depth discussion. Being someone who has, in the past, been active on several different `traditional' f

Flat forums are strictly worse than nested forums for in-depth discussion. Being someone who has, in the past, been active on several different `traditional' forums, I'd agree with that. You end up with a complete mess of people quoting posts that can sometimes be several pages back, or -- worse -- replying to posts several pages back without quoting, which just causes confusion.

polyfractal 14y ago
I think that depends on the audience of a forum. I'm a pretty regular poster at the SomethingAwful forums, which still utilizes a flat, quoted forum style. Say what you want about SA, but the average poster is pretty good. We routinely carry on huge megathread discussions about a single topic with no difficulty. Just pop into any of the subforums and check it out. The Recipes subforum, for example, may have a huge megathread dedicated to Cookies. Another about Stews. Another about Chicken. Within those, there will be all sorts of discussions, quoting, etc...but it never becomes unmanageable. You just learn to skim posts that don't interest you, read those that catch your eye, quote those that you want to respond to. The SA forum automatically limits quoting depth, so you only see the last quote or two. Frankly, I prefer a flat forum over threaded any day. Threaded forums are where discussions die. Once you leave the real-time, "in the moment" posting of a threaded discussion...it's impossible to spark the conversation again. Threads get too deep, there is no sense of what is new vs. old. New readers have an impossible time getting "into" the conversation, often piling into the top of a thread instead of the more active inner-parts. With a flat forum, you just skip to the end and see what's going on, maybe browse back a few pages to catch up.
- pi18n 14y ago
  But they have the "smaller safe" problem. This is where people don't want to read through the whole thread, so they skip to the end and post and write, "I bet there's a smaller safe inside!" So readers have to skim past dozens of those to get to the content. With threaded comments, it's more ephemeral, but the cream floats to the top, and the smaller safes sink to the bottom.
johnpowell 14y ago
At least for me I hate nested threads. And even worse is when upvoted stuff gets pushed up to the top. On HN I wait to read the comments until there is about 50 of them. Then I never visit the comments on the article again. Maybe there is a way to just read the new comments without digging through the stuff I have already read and I haven't found it. And this is also why I never respond if I make a comment here. It is simply a pain in the ass to find what I wrote again. But I have no problems on metafilter that is a single (flat) page with sometimes thousands of comments.

polyfractal 14y ago

I think that depends on the audience of a forum. I'm a pretty regular poster at the SomethingAwful forums, which still utilizes a flat, quoted forum style. Say what you want about SA, but the average poster is pretty good. We routinely carry on huge megathread discussions about a single topic with no difficulty. Just pop into any of the subforums and check it out. The Recipes subforum, for example, may have a huge megathread dedicated to Cookies. Another about Stews. Another about Chicken. Within those, there will be all sorts of discussions, quoting, etc...but it never becomes unmanageable. You just learn to skim posts that don't interest you, read those that catch your eye, quote those that you want to respond to. The SA forum automatically limits quoting depth, so you only see the last quote or two. Frankly, I prefer a flat forum over threaded any day. Threaded forums are where discussions die. Once you leave the real-time, "in the moment" posting of a threaded discussion...it's impossible to spark the conversation again. Threads get too deep, there is no sense of what is new vs. old. New readers have an impossible time getting "into" the conversation, often piling into the top of a thread instead of the more active inner-parts. With a flat forum, you just skip to the end and see what's going on, maybe browse back a few pages to catch up.

pi18n 14y ago
But they have the "smaller safe" problem. This is where people don't want to read through the whole thread, so they skip to the end and post and write, "I bet there's a smaller safe inside!" So readers have to skim past dozens of those to get to the content. With threaded comments, it's more ephemeral, but the cream floats to the top, and the smaller safes sink to the bottom.

johnpowell 14y ago

At least for me I hate nested threads. And even worse is when upvoted stuff gets pushed up to the top. On HN I wait to read the comments until there is about 50 of them. Then I never visit the comments on the article again. Maybe there is a way to just read the new comments without digging through the stuff I have already read and I haven't found it. And this is also why I never respond if I make a comment here. It is simply a pain in the ass to find what I wrote again. But I have no problems on metafilter that is a single (flat) page with sometimes thousands of comments.