4 ms·
Ask HN: What would graph-based discussions look like?
When we look at the evolution of discussions on the internet, we can see that it started with lists in chronological order (traditional forums). Then trees arised as can be seen in mailing lists, Reddit or HackerNews. This datastructure can represent what a post is responding to (instead of quoting).
What is the next step? Do you think graphs are more expressive? What about going even further and model discussions as Hypergraphs or Multigraphs?
- manx 11y agoVery interesting question. Cross-posting on Reddit comes to my mind. We can see Reddit as one big tree where the root node is Reddit. Directly connected are all subreddits, which again act as trees to connect all starting posts in one subreddit. Real cross-posts could be modeled with a graph, where one post belongs to multiple subreddits.
- alain94040 11y agoI'm interested in similar topics. I put together mockup on GitHub (https://github.com/alain94040/arguably https://github.com/alain94040/arguably). I could definitely use some more ideas. What do you think of ordering and voting? What about discussions that go in multiple directions?
- manx 11y agoYour introduction is great, I like how you question that there is only one right answer. This always annoys me on stack overflow. The answers are for everybody, the author of the question is just one case. But your mockups confuse me. I think there is more to discussion than just pro/contra. Also I don't see anything about graphs. Did I miss something? On voting I think that just up/down is not expressive enough. When somebody downvotes, I cannot tell if they disagree or just want to tell me that my post is too off topic or has bad quality. We need more choices. But this makes the UX more complicated. Do you have an Idea? What do you mean by discussion going in different directions? The branching that happens in tree comment systems like this one?
- no-twist 11y agoNice, I also like your introduction very much. I think for discussions that go into multiple directions, there should be some overview over the whole discussion to see how the different branches are connected and also a view to focus the branches separately to go into depth and start reading. I think a graph can really help to get an overview as it can capture more information about how posts are connected. Also, maybe "reply" is not the only relation which occurs in a discussion. What do you think about a graph-based model?
- kluck 11y agoI think there is a tendency to focus on finding an algorithm that determines weither and how many discussions are "the top x". But really this is not the point of discussions. The point is to maximize usefulness for the participants (weither they actively participate or passively just read along). Also to maximize usefulness in the long run, meaning discussions need to be archived in a way that they can be re-started easily. One discussion basicly concentrates the opinions and arguments around a certain topic, so the starting point is a plain topic (like "discussion about application containers") and not nessessarily a question (like "what do you think of docker?"). The whole question is really interesting.
- no-twist 11y agoI fully agree that there is a tendency to oversimplify the way online discussions are sorted. This often leads to a system where the rich get richer and it is difficult for new comments to get their audience; is it even obvious what an up or down vote means? I am not sure, but it might help to have a multi-dimensional voting system so there is a possibility to agree/disagree with a comment without signaling bad quality. For the second part, I think that in such a case it should be possible to connect the question ("what do you think about docker?") to the overall topic even after it was created. The structure should be flexible in a sense that a topic can grow in all directions and can be referenced in multiple discussions.
- dragonwriter 11y ago> Do you think graphs are more expressive? In principal, yes. Getting the UX right so that more than a few people will be comfortable using it... From working with mindmapping software I can see where graph (or multigraph) presentation of discussions could work well. > What about going even further and model discussions as Hypergraphs or Multigraphs? I can see utility in annotated multigraphs, but I don't see hypergraphs providing much that graphs don't already provide.
- manx 11y agoDo you think something like Mindmapping interfaces are not suitable for "more than a few people"? I'm trying to think about other graph representations that are intuitive, but nothing comes to my mind. Trees seem to have more possibilities.
- dragonwriter 11y ago> Do you think something like Mindmapping interfaces are not suitable for "more than a few people"? Well, given the limited apparent reach of mindmapping software compared to more linear notetaking software, quite possibly; also, while vaguely similar, its a different domain, and getting the right UI semantics is a new challenge for discussions. Also, discussion have a network effect, so accessibility to a broad audience is going to be even more important for forums than for mindmapping (though perhaps you could have a more linear, say tree-oriented, presentation along with a power-user graph-oriented presentation. Not sure if that's really viable.)
- dirkt 11y agoA tree is a natural structure, because often you respond to another post. A graph would mean responding to several posts, which doesn't happen that often. Usenet discussions have an additional structure on top of the answer-tree: You can group discussions by subject/topic, changing the subject line when the subject changes. So that would be a colored graph. Good Usenet readers have a lot more features (e.g. marking posts as read, killfiles) than anything that web-based discussions offer. I sometimes wish that web UI's would implement this, too.