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StackExchange Founder Vows to Reinvent Online Discourse

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Re: StackExchange Founder Vows to Reinvent Online Discourse

#11

Post by jacoblyles »

iends wrote: post #8
jacoblyles wrote: post #7

No nesting. Is this 2004? How are you supposed to follow a conversation more than two posts deep? This is PHPBB with more javascript.

I've never really liked nested conversations, personally.

A linear forum compared to a nested forum is like cutting off part of your brain. You have to expend brain power sorting out multiple conversations occurring in the same sequence. The quoting mechanism is an attempt to unbreak the linear forum, but it's a kludge. Linear forums are a cacophony of conversations intermixed.

Deep conversations die early on linear forums because they are too hard to follow. You will find more posts responding to the OP and fewer posts responding to each other. Linear forums are built for announcements or Q&A, not conversations.

Re: StackExchange Founder Vows to Reinvent Online Discourse

#13

Post by bunkat »

adventured wrote: post #12

First impression after spending some time on try.discourse.org --- it's very messy. The mess that online forums have been, seemingly since forever, should be reduced, not continued with snazzier implementation.

I'm not a huge fan of infinite scroll for things like this either. I always lose track of where I am in the list as new things keep being added. And then when I navigate down a level and come back up, my browser tends to lose track of where I was.

Re: StackExchange Founder Vows to Reinvent Online Discourse

#14

Post by damncabbage »

iends wrote: post #8
jacoblyles wrote: post #7

No nesting. Is this 2004? How are you supposed to follow a conversation more than two posts deep? This is PHPBB with more javascript.

I've never really liked nested conversations, personally.

But conversations are nested anyway. In real life you rarely have discussions with more than ten people at once. Even when you do, it's frustrating as you have to switch between topics instead of following the "threads" of the conversation. (And inevitably someone doesn't shut up and derails the conversation in a particular way.)

So what do current systems do?

* Go for broke, go full threading (eg. HN, Reddit, Usenet).

* Ignore it (eg. phpBB). Just like real life, everything gets muddied, but you have far more people in the conversation that would be practical in reality.

* Track it but try to hide it (eg. Twitter). Discussions have tree structures, but you can only have a flat view of them. You have to manually sift through replies to find the branching points and then trace it from there.

For example, these are two discussion trees branching from the same conversation starter:

https://twitter.com/lgarvey/status/279088834115940352

https://twitter.com/nitecoder/status/279088173743747072

In any case, I suspect Discourse's threading mostly stems from Jeff Atwood's dislike of threading: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/12/web-discussions-fla...

Re: StackExchange Founder Vows to Reinvent Online Discourse

#15

Post by wingerlang »

orangethirty wrote: post #10

Nuuton makes this obsolete due to being able to hold conversations (with nesting) about a given topic or website without actually having to be on it. Plus it eases search for information inside those same topics by indexing each post as an independent entity. Good try, though. Nuuton launches in March.

Any more information? The website gives me nothing.

Re: StackExchange Founder Vows to Reinvent Online Discourse

#16

Post by dmsinger »

iends wrote: post #8
jacoblyles wrote: post #7

No nesting. Is this 2004? How are you supposed to follow a conversation more than two posts deep? This is PHPBB with more javascript.

I've never really liked nested conversations, personally.

I don't care for nesting much either. While it may be more like real life one-on-one conversations, I find it more difficult to follow an entire thread and very hard to scan through. I can enjoy a segment, but that's one of the problems I see: it segments a conversation greatly. I think things stay more on topic with a flat discussion, and I discover things I would have missed in a threaded one.

I'd love to see some innovation in the forums space, it's been a while. I still don't see it, but I'm hopeful.

Re: StackExchange Founder Vows to Reinvent Online Discourse

#19

Post by orangethirty »

wingerlang wrote: post #15
orangethirty wrote: post #10

Nuuton makes this obsolete due to being able to hold conversations (with nesting) about a given topic or website without actually having to be on it. Plus it eases search for information inside those same topics by indexing each post as an independent entity. Good try, though. Nuuton launches in March.

Any more information? The website gives me nothing.

Shoot me an email.

The useless website is on purpose.

Re: StackExchange Founder Vows to Reinvent Online Discourse

#20

Post by stch2 »

jacoblyles wrote: post #11
iends wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never really liked nested conversations, personally.

A linear forum compared to a nested forum is like cutting off part of your brain. You have to expend brain power sorting out multiple conversations occurring in the same sequence. The quoting mechanism is an attempt to unbreak the linear forum, but it's a kludge. Linear forums are a cacophony of conversations intermixed. Deep conversations die early on linear forums because they are too hard to follow. You will find…

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.
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