On 8 Jun 2014, at 17:22, James Forrester <jforres...@wikimedia.org> wrote: — Krinkle
> On Sunday, June 8, 2014, Martijn Hoekstra <martijnhoeks...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Sun, Jun 8, 2014 at 1:18 AM, Martijn Hoekstra < >> martijnhoeks...@gmail.com <javascript:;>> >> wrote: >> >>>> Flow stores the comments as a structured tree >> >> That seems a fundamental mistake. A discussion isn't a tree, it's a dag at >> best. It's possible for a single comment in a discussion to refer to zero >> or more earlier comments, > > > Flow stores each discussion as a tree, with a Flow "Board" being a forest > of discussions for precisely this reason. > > >> and it's also possible for a single comment to >> refer to part of an earlier comment, which means a comment isn't an >> indivisable node. > > > Hmm. I'm not convinced that there has ever been a successful/useful/good > discussion system that encouraged sub-comment structured replies. In my > experience they are unusable morrasses of confusion. Instead, a lightweight > quoting tool achieves the specificity at the least complexity and greatest > clarity for users. > > I could be convinced otherwise, but it'd need to be a fairly stunning > design concept. > > J. > Throughout the years I've had to use at many different incarnations of conversation workflows. Such as: * Inline comments (such as on StackOverflow). * Issues trackers (like Bugzila or GitHub Issues). * Mailing threads (as rendered by Gmail or Apple Mail, both for 1-on-1 threads and those from mailing lists). * Helpdesk ticket systems. * Disqus. * Feedback systems (like GetSatisfaction and UserEcho). * WordPress comments. * LiquidThreads. * Your typical 90s-style forum board (like phpBB or vBulletin). * .. And I can't really come to any conclusion other than that the user experience is significantly worse when any of these used a tree structure (especially LiquidThreads and forum boards). It always ends up a mess. Fortunately, most of these have now either exclusively opted for a linear model or have an option to view it as a linear model (I think LiquidThread is the only exception on this list). Some systems, like Disqus and WordPress comments, handle it by only allowing a very limited number of nesting levels, though I'm not convinced this is useful. I agree with James and feel that having a good system for citing would significantly increase user experience more than any tree structure ever would (and having a tree of any kind always negatively impacts user experience). -- Timo _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
