Threaded vs Flat discussion design on Internet forums.

A12 · Post by **A12** » August 18th, 2023, 01:01

Threaded discussions like Reddit or most social medias where there's a hierarchy for replies. Post>Reply>Reply-to-reply where each further reply is "nested" inwards. EG: https://f.rpghq.org/tWlAzp5Fdb9I.gif

Flat discussions are similar to this site/most old school forums where posts are sorted by how recently they were made in a continuous fashion without any compartmentalisation.

Personally I feel like a flat discussion design serves the free airing of information since threading feels like it puts more emphasis on the original comment/post rather then giving the whole conversation the same weight. This shit is why Reddit sucks alongside the voting system.

GhostCow · Post by **GhostCow** » August 18th, 2023, 01:19

Threaded is terrible for forums and should never be used. It's fine for something like reddit though.

maidenhaver · Post by **maidenhaver** » August 18th, 2023, 01:19

I like threaded more, but I hate plebbit. Flat is good for low-traffic, like this site. Threaded would be stupid here, however it would be great for Cuckdex.

wndrbr · Post by **wndrbr** » August 18th, 2023, 01:29

Threaded only works for news-oriented sites, since it's designed for people to just quickly chime in their stupid opinions and it isn't very good at long-term preservation of information.

Emphyrio · Post by **Emphyrio** » August 18th, 2023, 01:38

Any popular blog that uses Disqus is ruined by the threading as it only loads replies to the first comment.

Post by **WhiteShark** » August 18th, 2023, 03:25

Threaded has only ever felt needlessly cumbersome to me. Imageboards have high traffic and do just fine with flat and replies, as do forums. Flat and chronological helps keep the whole thing a single conversation instead of a million discussions in parallel.

J1M · Post by **J1M** » August 18th, 2023, 15:34

The timing of a reply is the most important piece of context.

General Reign · Post by **General Reign** » August 18th, 2023, 20:16

When I was younger (98) I did not post on forums because they were in that shitty format where nothing could be found easily and everything mattered even if it was shit. NMA was like that back then when it was Interplay and Kilus had about 100 alt accounts so I wager nobody actually exists online and everyone is really Kilus.

A12 · Post by **A12** » August 18th, 2023, 22:21

J1M wrote: ↑ August 18th, 2023, 15:34
The timing of a reply is the most important piece of context.

Yeah pretty much, im a firm believer that more "features" site has the more it constricts the free flow of information and the less "life-like" discussions/conversations happen. I'm pretty sure no discussion I R L fragments into a dozen threads like on Reddit.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/03/ ... horror.com

Cool blog post for a past time, don't agree with everything this nigga says but its neat snapshot of a previous time