Re: plz replace this super ugly & damned bad board by a supergood one: take open source [of course]

[ikegami]

in reply to plz replace this super ugly & damned bad board by a supergood one: take open source [of course]

A flat model like phpBB is very poor when discussions take many diverging paths, as they do here in PM. A flat model would provide no context. Ever notice how boards that use the flat model have posts that quote its parent, grandparent, great-grandparent and great-great-grandparent? A threaded model eliminates this need and the confusion. A flat model would stiffle conversation here on PM.

Use of the threaded model is hardly "ancient". I quickly came up with http://www.livejournal.com/, http://www.slashdot.org/ and http://www.kuro5hin.org/ as modern examples of threaded forums.

If you're refering to some other aesthetic aspect, you'll have to be more specific.

[jeffa]

"A threaded model eliminates this need and the confusion. A flat model would stiffle conversation here on PM."

Indeed. Just take a look at the IMDb message boards. They allow users to view threads in either flat or threaded modes. But the problem there is that when you sign up, your default view mode is flat. What happens is the newbies don't know (or care) to switch to threaded mode while the regulars eventually switch to threaded mode. You have half of the populution looking at conversations in context, and the other half viewing merely by chronolical order. I have seen, many many times, people getting into heated arguments simply because of this dual nature of viewing threads -- they think person A is talking to them when person A was really flaming person B. This has been going on for years, and people still get bitten by it. Despite numorous requests to make threaded mode the default, the IMDb site developers sill have not.

[jdtoronto]

Back in the days of dial-up BBS systems and then Usenet - threaded mechanisms were very common, and this feature is, I believe, one of the greatest factors in their usability. The old forums on Compuserve were also a good example.

However the move of many groups to plain mailing lists makes it far more difficult to follow threads of conversation. Several groups I know of have gone to Yahoo, for example, and it is now far more difficult to manage. Excellent threads get lost in the dross of the daya to day, usually irrelevant, noise that these lists generate when un-moderated. Sadly moderation doesn't really work either. Self moderation by thread management is far more effective IMHO.

jdtoronto

[bart]

However the move of many groups to plain mailing lists makes it far more difficult to follow threads

Use a proper mail client, one that respects threads. This is a solved problem, all mails that are replies have a "References:" header with a list of message ideas it is a followup to — not just of the parent, so the thread structure is retained even if some messages go missing.