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.
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Monday November 30, 2015 @04:02PM (#51029009)
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 Usenet) who adore threaded discussion. There are others who absolutely *loathe* threaded discussion, and wish it would die in a fire.
Jeff's very much in the anti-threading camp [codinghorror.com], (2 [discourse.org]) though mostly on a practical, rather than ideological basis: "I have yet find any threaded discussion format I like". So Discourse only has a very limited threading model - basically just a "WTF is this person replying to?" button.
Without the ability to directly look at the context of a post, sorting posts removes all sorts of context about the discussion. Conversation is all about context, so removing it destroys the ability of the conversation to function. Flat posting forums solve this issue in one of three ways - either by forcing all readers into the same - usually chronological - context; by inducing users to heavily quote context in each post (quoting being something that also generates a large amount of acrimony); or by discarding the concept of "discussion" entirely, meaning posts devolve into disconnected soliloquies, related to each other only tenuously.
The ability of Slashdot (and Reddit, etc.) to sort conversations is very much predicated on the existence of threaded discussion.... Jeff's very much in the anti-threading camp
From the person whose question he was answering (who is temporarily sans mod points), this is a very insightful post. Jeff's answer makes perfect sense, if you *assume* the software doesn't strongly support threading. Which Discourse doesn't (mostly).
Now from *my* perspective, as a person who had a choice and has *chosen* to read email/news/forums in threaded mode since the first threaded newsreaders came out in the 80's, it doesn't answer the question at all. There are theoretically loads of other ways t
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:Sorting posts (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 Usenet) who adore threaded discussion. There are others who absolutely *loathe* threaded discussion, and wish it would die in a fire.
Jeff's very much in the anti-threading camp [codinghorror.com], (2 [discourse.org]) though mostly on a practical, rather than ideological basis: "I have yet find any threaded discussion format I like". So Discourse only has a very limited threading model - basically just a "WTF is this person replying to?" button.
Without the ability to directly look at the context of a post, sorting posts removes all sorts of context about the discussion. Conversation is all about context, so removing it destroys the ability of the conversation to function. Flat posting forums solve this issue in one of three ways - either by forcing all readers into the same - usually chronological - context; by inducing users to heavily quote context in each post (quoting being something that also generates a large amount of acrimony); or by discarding the concept of "discussion" entirely, meaning posts devolve into disconnected soliloquies, related to each other only tenuously.
Re: (Score:2)
The ability of Slashdot (and Reddit, etc.) to sort conversations is very much predicated on the existence of threaded discussion. ... Jeff's very much in the anti-threading camp
From the person whose question he was answering (who is temporarily sans mod points), this is a very insightful post. Jeff's answer makes perfect sense, if you *assume* the software doesn't strongly support threading. Which Discourse doesn't (mostly).
Now from *my* perspective, as a person who had a choice and has *chosen* to read email/news/forums in threaded mode since the first threaded newsreaders came out in the 80's, it doesn't answer the question at all. There are theoretically loads of other ways t
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!
Re: (Score:2)
SO is not for conversation. ;-)
Re: (Score:2)
But Discourse is, and that's what we are talking about here.
Re: (Score:2)
And I don't use them - I do use AU which is part of SO/SE.