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That's because Metafilter doesn't have a comment system. It has a discussion system. The only way to "discuss" anything on Reddit/HN is to yell at each other fr

That's because Metafilter doesn't have a comment system. It has a discussion system. The only way to "discuss" anything on Reddit/HN is to yell at each other from your respective soapboxes. In my experience, linear discussion — being far closer to in-person conversation — can lead to more interesting places and actually has the ability to change hearts and minds. The only places online where I feel a strong sense of community exclusively have linear discussion.

maxerickson 12y ago
How much of that comes from the linearity limiting participation (glibly, an exclusive community)? I hope people don't do too much deciding about what does and does not work at this early date, we've only had about 20 years of large scale internet participation, and much less of (in the English sphere) near total participation (total participation matters because people faced with the novelty of spraying their thoughts at strangers tend to behave somewhat differently than people who are used to it).
- archagon 12y ago
  Yes, it's good not to lock ourselves into a particular model, and I'm glad that companies like Discourse are exploring new models of community discussion. However, from my own personal experience, I have to say that discussions become a lot more interesting when they happen in real-time between small numbers of people. Comments tend to be brief. Topics shift around. People respond to each other. Interjections happen frequently. Opinions can freely mix and mingle in this environment, and the end result is a conversation that can actually go somewhere new. In threaded discussions, it feels more like people posting their pet walls-of-text at each other. In some ways, the "discussion" is already set in stone from the very start. Furthermore, there's a significant penalty to the upvote/downvote model. It incentivizes groupthink; promotes giant screeds and quippy jokes; keeps topics firmly segregated; prevents the discussion from branching out past an initial point.
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    I tend to think of this in terms of high context and low context. In that framework, you are identifying high context conversations as preferable. Given that the vast majority of human socialization has been high context (Between people who know much about each other), I don't think this is surprising. It satisfies our instincts and benefits from our habits. I don't explicitly talk about it above, but part of what I am getting at there is that you can't force a high context situation; it either exists, or it does not. Maybe the solution is simply to facilitate small groups that discuss things, I don't know. I think I would be disappointed if that is the case, because it would make it more difficult for me to access a wide range of viewpoints. The seemingly overly serious moderation here can probably be described as an attempt at getting people to acknowledge a little bit of extra shared context.
lurknomore 12y ago
I find this description of the threaded/linear dichotomy outright bizarre. Here I am making a reply that it is not out of the realm of possibility that only you will see, as far from "yelling across a room" as one can get and much like an actual in-person conversation. Whereas linear comments are posted as nothing more than a howl at the universe, a paragraph answered by no one at the bottom of an article and directed at no one in particular -- save for the use of kludges like "@commenter1234".
wpietri 12y ago
Let me give you an amen on this. A dozen years ago I was lucky enough to work with on-line pioneer Stewart Brand [1] on Long Bets [2]. We were talking about putting a discussion system on, and I just assumed it would be threaded. But it was his view that linear was much better. He thought (and I now agree) that linear systems force people to say more complete things, while threads drastically increase the ability of people to bicker. The bickering is compelling for the small number of people involved, but rarely interesting to anybody else, and can drown out the good discussion. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Brand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Brand [2] http://longbets.org/ http://longbets.org/

maxerickson 12y ago

How much of that comes from the linearity limiting participation (glibly, an exclusive community)? I hope people don't do too much deciding about what does and does not work at this early date, we've only had about 20 years of large scale internet participation, and much less of (in the English sphere) near total participation (total participation matters because people faced with the novelty of spraying their thoughts at strangers tend to behave somewhat differently than people who are used to it).

archagon 12y ago
Yes, it's good not to lock ourselves into a particular model, and I'm glad that companies like Discourse are exploring new models of community discussion. However, from my own personal experience, I have to say that discussions become a lot more interesting when they happen in real-time between small numbers of people. Comments tend to be brief. Topics shift around. People respond to each other. Interjections happen frequently. Opinions can freely mix and mingle in this environment, and the end result is a conversation that can actually go somewhere new. In threaded discussions, it feels more like people posting their pet walls-of-text at each other. In some ways, the "discussion" is already set in stone from the very start. Furthermore, there's a significant penalty to the upvote/downvote model. It incentivizes groupthink; promotes giant screeds and quippy jokes; keeps topics firmly segregated; prevents the discussion from branching out past an initial point.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  I tend to think of this in terms of high context and low context. In that framework, you are identifying high context conversations as preferable. Given that the vast majority of human socialization has been high context (Between people who know much about each other), I don't think this is surprising. It satisfies our instincts and benefits from our habits. I don't explicitly talk about it above, but part of what I am getting at there is that you can't force a high context situation; it either exists, or it does not. Maybe the solution is simply to facilitate small groups that discuss things, I don't know. I think I would be disappointed if that is the case, because it would make it more difficult for me to access a wide range of viewpoints. The seemingly overly serious moderation here can probably be described as an attempt at getting people to acknowledge a little bit of extra shared context.

lurknomore 12y ago

I find this description of the threaded/linear dichotomy outright bizarre. Here I am making a reply that it is not out of the realm of possibility that only you will see, as far from "yelling across a room" as one can get and much like an actual in-person conversation. Whereas linear comments are posted as nothing more than a howl at the universe, a paragraph answered by no one at the bottom of an article and directed at no one in particular -- save for the use of kludges like "@commenter1234".

wpietri 12y ago

Let me give you an amen on this. A dozen years ago I was lucky enough to work with on-line pioneer Stewart Brand [1] on Long Bets [2]. We were talking about putting a discussion system on, and I just assumed it would be threaded. But it was his view that linear was much better. He thought (and I now agree) that linear systems force people to say more complete things, while threads drastically increase the ability of people to bicker. The bickering is compelling for the small number of people involved, but rarely interesting to anybody else, and can drown out the good discussion. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Brand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Brand [2] http://longbets.org/ http://longbets.org/