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StackExchange Founder Vows to Reinvent Online Discourse

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Re: StackExchange Founder Vows to Reinvent Online Discourse

#31

Post by wpietri »

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 built a few different discussiony things. When I was building one for the Long Now a decade ago, I was going to put in threading. Because features are good. Stewart Brand, who started The WELL, talked me out of it. His point that stuck with me is that a major effect of threaded discussions is to improve the ability to bicker endlessly.

My default now is to leave them out. There are some contexts where lots of argument is valuable, but generally it's just a strain on the social fabric without a lot of upside.

Re: StackExchange Founder Vows to Reinvent Online Discourse

#33

Post by tomdale »

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.

Threaded comments—like here, on HN, and on Reddit—easily spiral out of control. It's especially hard to come back later and see what's new.

Many people seem to have missed this, but Discourse solves the problem in a particularly elegant way. Each topic is about, well, a single topic. The conversation flows as a series of replies, ordered chronologically.

If, however, you'd like to change the topic, there's a "Reply as New Topic" button to the right of every post. This allows you to create a new thread, with a new topic. Metadata about this forked topic is saved, so that future readers can easily bounce between related threads, while still having every message in sequence about the same "topic."

In my experience, this approach maintains the simplicity of flat discussion with the ability to fork topics of nested threads, without the complexity.

Re: StackExchange Founder Vows to Reinvent Online Discourse

#34

Post by Bockit »

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…

I find it a very different experience and have no trouble following discussions in linear threads. I find linear gets you more substantial discussions with multiple contributors all aware of one another.

Re: StackExchange Founder Vows to Reinvent Online Discourse

#35

Post by jacoblyles »

wpietri wrote: post #31
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 built a few different discussiony things. When I was building one for the Long Now a decade ago, I was going to put in threading. Because features are good. Stewart Brand, who started The WELL, talked me out of it. His point that stuck with me is that a major effect of threaded discussions is to improve the ability to bicker endlessly. My default now is to leave them out. There are some contexts where lots of ar…

>"His point that stuck with me is that a major effect of threaded discussions is to improve the ability to bicker endlessly."

This is called "having a conversation". In flat discussions you can't bicker endlessly because a large portion of the posts are just replying to the OP. There isn't as much back-and-forth or progression of the discussion. Discussions tend to get only a few levels deep.

The only time anybody has changed my mind has been on nested forums, like this one. It is because we had to go back and forth three or four times to arrive at a new understanding. Nesting let us track that discussion.

Maybe it's a personality flaw, but I have had far fewer enlightening experiences on flat forums!

Re: StackExchange Founder Vows to Reinvent Online Discourse

#36

Post by joe_the_user »

dmazin wrote: post #22

discourse's design entirely misses the charm and feeling of community that "ugly" forums like phpbb offer. This just looks bland. Maybe it can work for technical or support forums but not real communities. In general it seems like a lot of design fails to understand the difference between a clean bathroom and a charming but messy living room. You do not want the former. It makes me think of Spolsky on what a singles…

I hate phpbb and their ilk and use them often in forums for the tight, obscure subcultures that I'm a part of. I don't think phpbb gives a sense of community. I think a sense of community makes people willing to put up with the barfy fugliness of phpbb.

On the other, discourse actually just seems to have a different kind of ugliness rather than a good design or a good interface. Why do they all have a banner/header that takes up half the screen? Why all the unnecessary crap?

Re: StackExchange Founder Vows to Reinvent Online Discourse

#37

Post by sysop073 »

orangethirty wrote: post #19
wingerlang wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any more information? The website gives me nothing.

Shoot me an email. The useless website is on purpose.

I can see how your empty website will be crushing their fully-functional one any day now

Re: StackExchange Founder Vows to Reinvent Online Discourse

#38

Post by rohit89 »

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…

In my experience, I've found that a linear forum works great when its strictly moderated. No off-topic posts, sometimes not even something tangentially related. The community also plays a huge role in maintaining the quality.

Re: StackExchange Founder Vows to Reinvent Online Discourse

#39

Post by codinghorror »

tomdale wrote: post #33
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.

Threaded comments—like here, on HN, and on Reddit—easily spiral out of control. It's especially hard to come back later and see what's new. Many people seem to have missed this, but Discourse solves the problem in a particularly elegant way. Each topic is about, well, a single topic. The conversation flows as a series of replies, ordered chronologically. If, however, you'd like to change the topic, there's a "Reply a…

notice that one of the flag reasons is "off-topic", to give the poster (if threshold reached) a gentle nudge that hey, maybe they can click "Reply as new Topic" and take it there.

Or mods can click "select posts", click click click the posts they want, then click "move to new topic".

And topics created either way are bidirectionally linked, so you can follow different related tangents back and forth without breaking your flow in the main topic.

So either the community or mods can hopefully assist in keeping things on topic.

Re: StackExchange Founder Vows to Reinvent Online Discourse

#40

Post by codinghorror »

bunkat wrote: post #13
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.

We should never lose your place. We try very very hard not to. Experiment on try.discourse.org and see.
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