A real Forum for D

[Unknown W. Brackets]

Given the variety and fragmentation of clients, styles (above and 
below), etc. never hurts to say that the message is interpolated.

-[Unknown]


On 11/29/2011 2:55 AM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> I wouldn't call making custom skins "trivial"...

Well, I'd expect one to be made to integrate the look with digitalmars, 
in the case that one were used.  Generally, most softwares make this 
relatively easy, depending on a few factors.

In this particular case, it should (I'm assuming, if the HTML is written 
correctly), be a minor CSS change.

> But why would you consider subthreads undesirable? In a threaded view,
> subthreads you are not interested in are a non-issue. What you call
> "self moderation" seems to me like an artificial restriction that has no
> reason to be there.
>
> Netiquette still asks that posters substantially diverging from the
> current subject to amend the subject line, and - if entirely off-topic
> discussion is unavoidable - mark it as such with the [OT] tag.

Well, that's all I mean by self moderation.  If users are making a 
conscious effort to clarify (just like a "forward" button in email), 
then problem solved.

I find subthreads undesirable because humans think and experience the 
conversation linearly.  They're not unlikely to cross reference, and in 
newsgroups it's common to read "as X posted in his other reply" and 
such.  So, then you have to go hunt that down.

It also seems like providing links to other posts can't be done ideally. 
  It's rarely done, sometimes it uses a proprietary link, sometimes it 
uses news://, and in most readers this seems to break threading (e.g. 
pretty sure Thunderbird just opens the post in a new tab without 
context.)  So, solving the multi-parent/cross-referencing issue oneself 
isn't trivial.

> In our case, it's clear that we have users who prefer linear and
> threaded views, and web-based vs. dedicated UIs - therefore, the
> solution is obvious: choice.

Sure, and choice is wonderful.  But conflicting choice is the problem. 
For example, on a web based forum I typically will reply, quoting 
multiple people who talked about similar things, and addressing their 
points or concerns together.

I may make multiple posts in a row (depending on the forum, some 
consider this bad manners) if there are many posts to reply to with 
slightly varying sub-subjects.

This usually works well, and allows people to skim in ways that make sense.

Now, if I have the choice to do that, how does it mesh with a newsgroup 
style?  Now I have a single post with multiple parents.  Where does it 
go?  This is the question that "hybrid mode" fails to answer, and when 
you see it enabled, it's obvious who does and who doesn't use the threading.

So, in that case at least, choice makes everyone lose, basically.

> Well, after seeing the rather sorry implementations of threaded views in
> forums, it certainly does look like the forum developers "didn't get it"
> when their users asked for a thread view.

I'd argue this just means no one requested it.

Anyway, I searched just a bit and found just one post for someone 
requesting Jelsoft add keyboard navigation to the threaded view... from 
2002 with no replies.  I can't really blame them for not putting too 
much attention on the feature if that's all they've received.

Doing a few casual Google searches, it seems people generally prefer 
IP.Board's threaded style, but I haven't seen this.

-[Unknown]