TDPL a bad idea?

[Roman Ivanov]

On 2/6/2010 5:33 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
> Yigal Chripun wrote:
>> On 06/02/2010 23:42, Walter Bright wrote:
>>> Yigal Chripun wrote:
>>>> Walter, Please take a look at FUDForum.
>>>
>>> I did, thanks for the reference. I think reddit blows it away for user
>>> interface. Fudforum has the usual problem with web forums of using too
>>> much vertical space, meaning you have a hard time keeping track of where
>>> you are in a thread.
>>
>> Did you try switching to the tree view? It looks almost like reddit, IMO.
> 
> I'm looking at it now. It looks nothing like reddit, to me. Reddit shows
> all the post contents in a threaded, indented manner.

There is a lot of wisdom in linear threads. In my experience they work
better than tree-like interfaces for larger discussions.

Here is why. A linear thread extends only at one point - messages are
added at the end. So when you try to keep track of some discussion, you
only need to keep track of one thing: the last message you have read.

In a tree-like forum, a discussion can be extended at any point, and the
bigger the thread grows, the more points there are. It's more difficult
to keep track of, and it's /much/ more difficult to see the "current"
state of an entire discussion that you haven't read from the start. You
can't just read the last 10-20 messages, because they could be from
entirely different, unrelated branches. Linear threads insure that users
are on the same page of a topic, both figuratively and literally.

Also, with a threaded interface topic indexes are much less useful. You
can't just look at topic titles and say "ah-ha, that interesting
conversation I've read yesterday has more replies," because a topic can
be bumped by any of its branches.

> For another example, a simple two word message on FUDForum consumes 2
> inches of vertical space. The same on Reddit consumes 3/4 inch.

This can be tweaked, usually. I agree that a forum shouldn't have a lot
of useless fluff around messages (like image signatures), but it works
only up to a certain limit. I mean, cramming 200 posts onto one page is
not a very good idea either.

Besides, reddit doesn't seem to be a place for in-depth discussions with
long posts and some kind of common "topic state" that changes over time.
Its interface is customized for short comments that are both quickly
posted and quickly forgotten. Or am I wrong about this one?