Testing Nested Replies on Meta

I am confident that you are capable of achieving this :wink: In flat mode, it works just like in any other topic


https://meta.discourse.org/t/testing-nested-replies-on-meta/398759?flat=1

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hardcore / oldschool / power users will hate this, and as much as we might dislike it or find it confusing or even “anti-discourse”, it seems there are new admins who want this feature nowadays (especially farcebook migrations).

i can see it making sense and working for certain types of forums and community structures, but it’s pretty horrendous for the general linear topic discussion that Discourse is designed for (and many of us are accustomed to). it has that Reddit buried rabbit holes of degraded comments problem, and mega-topics could get especially unruly and really difficult to follow. doesn’t take me long to click the flat mode button.

for example, i think it would be useful in a forum where different people are sharing photos in a topic and people want to comment each specific post.

i know this is super difficult to build into Discourse, so it’s impressive that this works as well as it does.

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I somehow arrived at a scoped view without realizing it (perhaps through a notification?)

https://meta.discourse.org/nested/testing-nested-replies-on-meta/398759?post_number=43&sort=new

I was very confused about where the other replies I had remembered seeing before (and making myself) went. Thought perhaps some “cleanup on aisle 5” had already been done and those posts were just gone.

Then I scrolled up an noticed the “View full thread” link:

Perhaps I would have noticed it sooner if it were placed somewhere sticky?

One thing I don’t like on reddit is how they handle hidden +XX replies. If you click on it the first time, it just shows additonal replies. At this stage is ok. But for deeper levels, if you click on +YY replies, it loads a different page, loading only these new comments. This is slow (because their site sucks I guess), and going back to the previous contact by pressing the browser’s back button or the offered options (full comments, single comment threads…) isn’t very elegant.

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Currently it works a bit the same on Discourse.

Here’s a concept of nested deep navigation I thought about that perhaps would make the nested experience more pleasant:

https://gemini.google.com/share/7aaaa210dcb6

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I think working on a nested view is a good opportunity to think about how the information is displayed to users, how they navigate through this information, and come up with ideas that might be more creative and functional than the “Reddit way”. :slight_smile:

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Lol this is a pretty good troll. Well done.

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Yeah when the post_number param is present in a link you get taken to the specific tree that, that post is in. Agreed on it not being visually clear enough, but I think the general pattern is correct. Thanks for testing!!!

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Thinking more about this, i have an actual use-case for this on a by-category or by-topic basis. I run a sports fan forum and we do multiple sports pools throughout the year. we have specific topics for our weekly game picks and members like to comment on each other’s selections. this leads to an issue where there are multiple threads of discussion in a topic and keeping track or recording the picks can be a challenge when they are buried amongst other replies. having embedded commenting enabled would make it much easier for people to comment on each other’s initial posts, while maintaining a sense of organization for the purpose of the topic, that is, for the users to make their weekly game picks.

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Yup, the whole idea is to offer it where it makes sense. For example sites discussing current news, or with 10000’s of active users where the linear model doesn’t scale super well.

Doesn’t make much sense for smaller communities I do agree, but don’t we want Discourse to be used by all!?

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Yes @Lilly that is the spirit! You hit the nail in the head!

We built this experiment with category level toggles, it is how we see most of the existing communities adopt it.

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This is now open for TL0+

Leader Of The Pack

BTW, y’all can also create new topics for testing in this category!

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Flat view will always be the number one, this is just an option :wink:

Most simple themes won’t have much trouble, we are reusing the post object so most stuff carries well over.

Topic view changes will have to adapt, but it is not like we are making this a default.

That’s the spirit!

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hah, sorry i wasn’t meaning to suggest it wasn’t useful or shouldn’t be pursued - i know very well that certain orgs want this and i totally understand why. it’s great that Discourse is expanding it’s capabilities to adapt.

i could also see a use case for certain types of journaling, like meetup photo topics! :wink:

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Damn, this is really cool! Check this out @awesomerobot

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Ooh, I saw this on github not that long ago while looking for something else and got all excited :eyes: glad to see it getting tested out here.

I really, really like the nested replies. I’m migrating a community that used to be a livejournal community back in the day, and nested replies are good for our case where a thread may start general but then end up with lots of branches in different directions. The typical discourse flat view wasn’t very intuitive for how our conversations usually go but we were prepared to make it work; this is a nice format for communities with a “lineage” like ours and more like the formats we’re used to reading.

To me it feels very intuitive so far and I like the reddit-y collapse replies buttons. Very much looking forward to seeing how this evolves :partying_face:

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It would be interesting to also have an option to toggle view of topic.

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Yup, I’ve been pushing for this to be a user preference somehow, but some people are skeptic about it.

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Personally I think having it in a user setting makes sense in line with the other ways Discourse allows per-user granular customization for eg watching/muting tags/categories/topics.

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staying true to many threaded discussion platforms :laughing:

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