Atwood: Sorting a conversation by votes is a pretty effective way to destroy conversation. How can you follow the logical flow of back and forth, chronological dialog when the ground is constantly shifting underneath you as posts get voted up or down? You can't.
The ability of Slashdot (and Reddit, etc.) to sort conversations is very much predicated on the existence of threaded discussion. Without threaded discussion, the direct replies to a topic get lost and scattered, and may even end up before the post they were replying to, with all the temporal paradoxes that involves.
In my experience, there is nothing more controversial in the realm of online discussion boards as the for/against on threaded conversation. There are people (mostly older folks who remember Usen
I will not use a system (for conversation, this sort of site - as an example) that does not allow me to sort (oldest first), thread (oldest first - still), show all (-1, here), and allow me to have a metric ton (preferably all) comments loaded at once. I read. I read a lot - an unhealthy amount, really. Since the days of yore, I've read comments at various sites. This system works for me.
Sometimes the longer and more involved topics can make threading difficult but Slashdot deals with this nicely with a lin
"I will not use a system (for conversation, this sort of site - as an example) that does not allow me to sort (oldest first), thread (oldest first - still), show all (-1, here), and allow me to have a metric ton (preferably all) comments loaded at once."
Well you showed them! You don't have an answer to your question, and you can't get your job done, but by God you stuck to your guns and showed that SO who is boss!
Sorting posts (Score:2)
Atwood: Sorting a conversation by votes is a pretty effective way to destroy conversation. How can you follow the logical flow of back and forth, chronological dialog when the ground is constantly shifting underneath you as posts get voted up or down? You can't.
I have done it here for years.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The ability of Slashdot (and Reddit, etc.) to sort conversations is very much predicated on the existence of threaded discussion. Without threaded discussion, the direct replies to a topic get lost and scattered, and may even end up before the post they were replying to, with all the temporal paradoxes that involves.
In my experience, there is nothing more controversial in the realm of online discussion boards as the for/against on threaded conversation. There are people (mostly older folks who remember Usen
Re: (Score:2)
I will not use a system (for conversation, this sort of site - as an example) that does not allow me to sort (oldest first), thread (oldest first - still), show all (-1, here), and allow me to have a metric ton (preferably all) comments loaded at once. I read. I read a lot - an unhealthy amount, really. Since the days of yore, I've read comments at various sites. This system works for me.
Sometimes the longer and more involved topics can make threading difficult but Slashdot deals with this nicely with a lin
Re: (Score:2)
Well you showed them! You don't have an answer to your question, and you can't get your job done, but by God you stuck to your guns and showed that SO who is boss!
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SO is not for conversation. ;-)
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But Discourse is, and that's what we are talking about here.
Re:Sorting posts (Score:2)
And I don't use them - I do use AU which is part of SO/SE.