Terminally incoherent subreddit! I’d subscribe!

There’s more than a couple of forums I’ve been a member of that have slowly died, but I could show up to one more…

@ Luke Maciak:

That’s a good point. I had honestly thought of threading as always better. But as you pointed out, it has its own limitations, which makes the decision a tradeoff.

I have also noticed the issue where the same point is made in across several threads. It shows that forum threading still doesn’t accurately reflect the structure of real conversations. That could probably be improved, but at the cost of complicating the user interface — i.e. extra options like “reply to all checked threads” and more complicated displays which attempt to communicate arbitrary conversation structures.

I hate seriously dislike forums.

I will give yours a try, and promptly forget to go check for messages to which I need to reply. Forums make me turn out as a socially retarded person. Which I am. That is besides the point. ;-)

I’d say start with one category, then split as warranted by actual posting. Just my opinion. ;)

Perhaps make a mailing list :)

Hey, question – should I consolidate the 4 forums into 1? I’m jumping in between them and it seems like that could be a good idea. Easier to keep track of everything if it’s on one page.

What do you think?

@ Chris Wellons:

I think threaded vs non-threaded is actually much more complex issue. It is not merely old paradigm vs new paradigm. There are significant downsides to a threaded conversations:

Threading creates avenues for localized conversation. It makes it easier for people to post things like “lol” or “mee too” because the comment and response are spatially linked. It also encourages users to have private one-on-one discussions ignoring the bigger thread if they please. This in turn causes redundancy as people jump in and out of the discussion at various points. I have seen reddit threads in which the same overal point-counterpoint was re-iterated 5-6 times across the entire length of the thread because folks simply did not bother to scroll down before commenting.

Non-threaded model forces users to look at the thread in a more holistic way. It minimizes repetition because you have to logically connect your response not only to one specific comment, but also to other responses directly below it.

Finally, you can’t thread forever – threading too deep breaks layout so most threading forums putt a cutoff point at some level. This is an artificial limit break for conversations.

Let’s say two people are arguing some topic – after few rounds the threading software will either prevent them from directly replying to each other, or will encapsulate the further conversation away from the main thread (the way reddit does) at which it becomes cumbersome to follow.

As for subreddit – that’s generally a good suggestion. For me, this started with me messing around with the Fofou code and Google App Engine and then getting the idea of setting up a forum. :P

@ IceBrain:

Yeah, we have people from all timezones here. It is a very asynchronous community we have here. Granted, if you are big enough you can rely on enough people being online to cover the chatroom at all times. I don’t think we would have that many users though.

I’ll check out the forum, but I already spend way too much time on Hacker News and Slashdot.

@ Andrew Zimmerman:
Registration is an “effort token”. It’s like that delay that operating systems have between tries in the log in. They’re a small cost for a normal user, who only logins once, but they can be crucial for a brute forcer who needs to trie thousands.

Similarly, registration doesn’t cost much to a normal user compared to the time he spends on the forum, but it forces a troll to spend much more effort to keep trolling, assuming he gets banned regularly.

@ Dr. Azrael Tod:
IRC requires people to be online at the same time, though. Considering that in the few comments here in this post there are people in EST, GMT and GMT+1, that can be hard.

It works if you have so many people that plenty will be online at any given time (like #debian and such), but I doubt that is the case here.

@ Chris Wellons:
Reddit’s software is actually open source, and there are a few Reddit powered boards out there. I have no idea what are the requirements, though.

I’m always surprised to see modern forum software that doesn’t support threaded conversations. That’s really a must-have feature if you want to have a non-trivial amount of dialog. People try, but it’s always really messy. Its absence is enough for me to not bother using a forum at all.

Right now, if I wanted to make a casual forum for myself, I’d just create a subreddit. It’s trivial to do, many people already have accounts, and making a new account is really, really simple. On the other hand, you wouldn’t have full control over the forum.

However, I wish you well in your efforts to bootstrap a community. :-)