Threaded discussion is ultimately too complex to survive on the public Internet?

[rokejulianlockhart (Roke Julian Lockhart Beedell)]

@Sailsman63

the back-and-forth between the two of us is comprised of posts 56, 57, 59, 62, 63, 66, 67 & now 71. In a threaded model, these would be their own little tree.

Such a view would, however, be inaccurate. The presentation of my post 62 was influenced by Vel’s 61, and further reflection on it, as well as Piffy’s observation,

@Sailsman63, you’re making a very good point that I actually tend to make over and over again, when (yes, I’ll use this analogy a lot) discussing filesystems with people - direct hierarchy is rarely enough to demonstrate complex relationships.

I think you’ve provided ample evidence for Discourse to have both a more robust common relationship mechanism and separate extensible view models. Specifically:

1. When writing a new response, allow a person to choose multiple comments to mark as responded to. This means that a user doesn’t have to tag multiple people in their comment if they’re responding to multiple comments, and ensures that it is objectively communicated what they’re responding to.

2. This can then be consumed by the user’s choice of view model (flat, threaded, MermaidJS-like relationship diagram for that kind of person who spends his days looking at relational databases).

   1. Flat would merely display multiple avatars in the response indication header.

   2. Threaded would base the hierarchy upon either a comment which the responder designated as “primary” (not an ideal solution, but intuitive).

   3. The Mermaid-like view (Star?) would provide an overview of what topics appear to be of most importance, then allowing the user to select a comment and switch to one of the aforementioned standard views.

Agree?

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@Sailsman63

If this is how you approach online discussions - speed-running to the next direct response without at least skimming the intervening material to absorb the gist of it - I would respectfully suggest that you are:

• Depriving yourself of a more nuanced, broad view of the conversation as it has taken place.
• Depriving others in the conversation of a reasoned response that takes into account what has already been said, at least in cases where there are multiple people chiming in at the same time.

It depends upon the conversation. In topics like these, all of the context must be considered. However, in a thread about a technical issue which has divulged into discussions between multiple people like this has, requesting a summary or commenting upon a specific part distinct to the rest means that the rest need not be considered.

Everything is a cost-benefit analysis. I don’t have infinite time.

@Sailsman63

I might postulate that this behavior has at least partly been taught to you by threaded discussion models.

It was certainly influenced, indeed.