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Forgive me if I'm missing the point, but it looks like it's just a complicated description of tagging, with commenting on the tags instead of the individual art

by benaiah 13y ago

Forgive me if I'm missing the point, but it looks like it's just a complicated description of tagging, with commenting on the tags instead of the individual articles. That said, it could still be interesting. The problem is, unless you're commenting on specific articles, you'll just end up with extremely general, "cheap" comments filling up the tag, with no specific topics to produce genuinely interesting conversations instead of blathering pontification. It would be interesting to see a system like that. I think it would require some very strong community norms to keep it in check, which is fundamentally unstable (e.g., HN today is very different than it was a couple years ago, when I started reading).

DanBC 13y ago
> You'll just end up with extremely general, "cheap" comments filling up the tag, with no specific topics to produce genuinely interesting conversations instead of blathering pontification. I think that's the problem with a lot of the submissions to HN. Something happens, and 8 different tech blogs cover it, and 3 different newspapers, and 5 different bloggers. All of these get submitted to HN. Some of them make it to the front page, where people have the same discussion.
derefr 13y ago
What I was going for was more like a traditional message-board design with "forum threads", each on a given "topic" that drifts over time along with the conversation. (Tags keep a discussion pinned to what the tag is "about", whereas a thread is just a cluster of posts, and the cluster's "topic"--its center of mass--can drift as more points are added to the cluster.) Except, with this "message board", some posts (text posts or links) could be granted a special status and "promoted" up to a pinned area at the top, to serve as a collection of "prerequisites and resources for discussion." The thread's "preview" on the index would then show newest pinned stuff.
- benaiah 13y ago
  Thanks for the clarification - that does sound more nuanced than what I gathered originally. It actually sounds like a quite interesting way to do discussion - I'd love to hear more, if you've fleshed it out any further.

by benaiah 13y ago

DanBC 13y ago

> You'll just end up with extremely general, "cheap" comments filling up the tag, with no specific topics to produce genuinely interesting conversations instead of blathering pontification. I think that's the problem with a lot of the submissions to HN. Something happens, and 8 different tech blogs cover it, and 3 different newspapers, and 5 different bloggers. All of these get submitted to HN. Some of them make it to the front page, where people have the same discussion.

derefr 13y ago

What I was going for was more like a traditional message-board design with "forum threads", each on a given "topic" that drifts over time along with the conversation. (Tags keep a discussion pinned to what the tag is "about", whereas a thread is just a cluster of posts, and the cluster's "topic"--its center of mass--can drift as more points are added to the cluster.) Except, with this "message board", some posts (text posts or links) could be granted a special status and "promoted" up to a pinned area at the top, to serve as a collection of "prerequisites and resources for discussion." The thread's "preview" on the index would then show newest pinned stuff.

benaiah 13y ago
Thanks for the clarification - that does sound more nuanced than what I gathered originally. It actually sounds like a quite interesting way to do discussion - I'd love to hear more, if you've fleshed it out any further.