Comment by eschaton
3 years ago
Huh? Things like message threading are not only common on forums (like HN and Reddit and Slashdot and…) but with newsgroups and mailing list they’re entirely up to the client application you’re using to access them.
I use Mail for email and Thunderbird for news on macOS: Mail only presents one layer of hierarchy, while Thunderbird can show replies hierarchically _or you can turn that off_.
With a forum, you’re making that decision for me, instead of letting me make it for myself.
I can’t believe how ignorant people are about how things work.
Reddit is not a forum, HN almost is but not really... The community is
Having hierarchy exist at all changes the way it's used, just like having pointer arithmetic exist in a language at all changes it. You can't just not use it, other people will, and you'll attract more users that like it and fewer that hate it, etc.
I would guess hierarchy appeals to the people with more active minds always running many loosely connected tracks at once, but doesn't do much for everyone else.
Linear threads are a social convention as much as a tech feature. They emulate real life conversations, they encourage separate threads for anything off topic, or catch all randomness threads. They create a linear history you can read through and know the order of events, like a collective story.
Note that chat platforms, which is where the article says all the lore is now, are much more linear, even moreso than forums.
We also have "Flat is better than nested" in the zen of python.
The only thing I can see being beneficial is the ability to mix in random off topic banter and memes and make everything a bit more personal and less like stack overflow... But somehow, platforms with linear threads seem to have a stronger sense of community anyway.
Also, linear threads create a sense of responsibility with every post and topic. Everyone sees them, and the format allows for the users avatar to be prominently visible. It's not just a message to one commenter and the few who dig that deeply. That seems to discourage random low effort fart joke reposts, aside from a small number that one feels are quality enough to merit a post.
Plus, pagination is basically impossible without linear threads, or mostly linear threads. You can paginate top level stuff. But ultimately it's unstructured. Stuff will be buried in the 300th reply to the 12th reply to the 80th reply and you can't navigate if you don't have a bookmark or a spare hour.
You can't jump back about a week or so ish if you're new to a long running thread nobody could read all of.
And maybe most importantly, the target audience of many forums either doesn't know how to, or isn't interested in using special news reader settings. Minimalism and flexibility are themselves, features not everyone needs.
Are you really, honestly suggesting that mail and news supporting the `In-Reply-To :` header and some people choosing to use clients that leverage it to order messages is an almost unbearable burden for community formation?
How is using `In-Reply-To:` to aggregate and order related messages any different than having individual threads in a forum? In a modeling sense they’re effectively identical, one represented by a linked list and the other by a vector.
If anything is adding hierarchy, it’s forums, because people tend to create boards and sub-boards and sub-sub-boards etc. and even there individual threads will develop their own cultures with a critical combination of user mass and time.
I just want the option to interact with fora in a way other than the web, I don’t want to take the ability to interact with them via the web away from you (regardless of my own opinion of it).
It's not an unbearable burden, it's a minor annoyance, of the kind hackers frequently accept, but people looking for polished optimal solutions don't.
Most forums I see have only 4 levels, section, subsection, thread, post, and many don't even have subsections, wheras mail and reddit and newsgroups can have infinite depth.
Also, the number of sections and subsections is generally small and controlled by moderators.
It's a fully dynamic DAG vs a premade mostly fixed DAG with only topic->post levels after that.
The individual threads having their own culture is kind of part of the point.
Newsgroups are much more powerful and general, but the ability of tech to enforce restrictions is just as valuable as it's ability to enable possibilities.
Linear threads is a much simpler mental model, and prioritizes knowledge in the world over knowledge in the head, it's a model that lends itself to directly displaying more of the state, one list you read through in pages, wheras dynamic infinite hierarchy is built for much more interactive navigation and involves much more context in your head especially as a new reader wondering what the heck went on in a thread.
There's 800 replies, 100 are in a sub thread for a meme, 50 are in an unrelated discussion of how lawn decor affects gun politics (With 3 relevant on topic posts mixed in), 400 are top level shitposts, all the real discussion starts at a third level comment...
There's no linear narrative. Especially if drama happens, there's no "Oh, ok, this got revealed then people got angry after that", that immediately jumps out.
It's not a super big deal, but I do think it probably takes away more than it adds for most average users. Considering everyone seemed pretty happy with forums.
But then again I know a lot of really smart people who always have 50 things happening and if you're thoughts aren't linear and there's 100 thoughts in your head connected to every one you actually say, then a less linear platform that relies more on context in your head, and doesn't attempt to just 1-1 mirror IRL discussions probably is a great fit.
Congratulations on using your stuff. But I really like my web browser. Thanks.
We need browsers to natively support newsgroups. But that would cause too much political backlash, so it wouldn't happen.
Unfortunately, browsers don't seem to be interested in native support for much of anything. It's all just javascript APIs where the websites are incontrol of the experience instead of your user agent. Video streaming is extremely limited without client-side javascript. They even removed the minimal RSS support that we had.