Move to a platform with threaded replies?
At last! DPreview.com moving to Xenforo
- Thread starter JamesBrown
- Start date
findozor
Active member
every big platform is using threaded structure it is validated on a such big amount of data so it is obvious for everyone but yes there is always a loud minority including devs who are averse to change and evolve. so
smallwheels
Well-known member
The benefit of using interpunctation is validated for basically centuries, still you ignore it. Also it is well known that an argument like "it is obvious for everyone" is nothing but a cheap rethoric trick used by those who do have in fact a strong opinion but no real foundation. Could you please give examples for "every big platform is using threaded structure"? Sounds to me like an another cheap claim that won't survive any checks. Maybe it is you who is
? Threaded views were common 30 years ago and since then have become more rare - possibly not because everyone is dumb...
If you see threaded structure as crucial for success and user acceptance and everything else doomed to fail the big question is why didn't you
many years ago already?
SoulReplicant
Active member
Uuuhh..... Reddit? Quora? Wordpress comments system?
mjda
Well-known member
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram...I'd argue that, while it's not something I'd automatically use on my forum, it would be something folks are used to seeing everywhere else. If, for example, you had all the primary replies posted below the message, with some kind of clickable element below each that said something like "Read 23 more replies...". The way they've, historically, been presented on forums is not very elogant looking and can be very confusing. Paying close attention to how it looks, to make sure it's very clear what's happening, I think it could probably work again these days. Again, I think it's just what folks are used to.
All that said, if this were to be something that was implemented, I sure hope there is a way to switch between the two either site-wide, or per-user.
smallwheels
Well-known member
And these are "every" platform? I do have my doubts. Btw. interesting, that you did not mention a single forum. It has often been said: If you want general social media use general social media, not a forum. If you want your forum to imitate social media, eager for the traffic those platforms get, you'll always loose in comparison. And they don't get their traffic because of nested comments, that's for sure.
Personally, with most of these platforms I find threaded comments rather annoying. They do have their benefits but when you read a lot of threads or very long threads it does become very annoying. Especially with an implementation like on reddit where you have to switch views to be able to read more nested comments. It is quite horrible and utterly useless when you want to find a comment that you once read later on. Personally the old system on DPreview (the migration of which is btw. the topic of this thread, not a general "we want nested comments in XF or we will all die") with the possibility of changing headlines in replies can drive one nuts. Especially when you have to click on every single reply to read it - and half of them do contain nothing new or interesting.
Reddit, Qora, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have all something in common: They are all "read once, then quickly forget forever and never look back" - apart from maybe Quora all platforms that are mainly for actual topics and for general chatter, not for information and serious discussion, as many forums are. So a completely different use case from many forums.
Digital Doctor
Well-known member
... more ...
Youtube comments (one level of threading)
Fora (modified Xenforo)
Stack Overflow
Digital Doctor
Well-known member
are irrelevant now.
zappaDPJ
Well-known member
Although I'm not a huge advocate of threaded platforms, they seemed well suited to DPreview. To an extent it's what you get used to, https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/ being another example where threaded replies seems to suit well. It's ugly but it works.
I can understand why DPreview have moved to Xenforo but it'll take me a while to get used to the new way of looking at things even though I spend large amounts of my time on forums built around Xenforo.
It's certainly not all good, my biggest complaint is the lack of visible content compared to how the threaded forum presented. The somewhat diminished accessibility is also annoying. It may now look pretty but all the white space is very much to the detriment of the amount of content presented.
I'll get used to the change and it makes sense for the site owner but it's a change that won't go down well with a lot of longstanding members.
I can understand why DPreview have moved to Xenforo but it'll take me a while to get used to the new way of looking at things even though I spend large amounts of my time on forums built around Xenforo.
It's certainly not all good, my biggest complaint is the lack of visible content compared to how the threaded forum presented. The somewhat diminished accessibility is also annoying. It may now look pretty but all the white space is very much to the detriment of the amount of content presented.
I'll get used to the change and it makes sense for the site owner but it's a change that won't go down well with a lot of longstanding members.
Digital Doctor
Well-known member
Digital Doctor
Well-known member
zappaDPJ
Well-known member
Indeed but there would be a riot if it ever got changed.
Digital Doctor
Well-known member
Agreed.
smallwheels
Well-known member
... and probably pretty horrible to read. In fact a very dated forum software. Also, if you open such a thread in that forum to read the postings there is no threaded view any more and no navigation, so basically a bit of a strange implementation.
JamesBrown
Well-known member
What a dumb view. Looks like its Bart Simpsons detention lines.
SoulReplicant
Active member
Unity, OpenAI and NVIDIA developer forums, all of them with thousands of members & messages, all of them running on Discourse which has nested replies (at least in 1 level)
Right. The nested comments are for better UX. If you add quality info your results skyrocket. Many more examples of abandoned or very weak communities running on flat view platforms. Just look at the examples on the "Forum Showcase" here on XF.
Why is that? Maybe you read all the sub-sub-sub comments of a particular reply digging down to the deep levels and then you get lost going back to the top to read the next reply to the OP? In my case I've been guilty of this. But now I learned that if a nested comment and sub comments goes to a part I'm not interested, which inevitably happens even with proper moderation (it's almost impossible to keep everyone strictly on track to the main thread subject, even more with lots of people and replies), I can just collapse it and move to the next reply at the top level. With flat views I can't do that, I'm forced to scroll, scroll, scroll and even going to the next page and READ all the whole replies and quotes between 2 or more people who took the conversation between them before I find a new fresh reply for the OP subject.
I give you this. Going deep in the sublevels (and changing views) is not optimal. For that reason allowing 2 o max 3 levels of nesting is the fine spot. And I hope many platforms and forums implement that.
Again that speaks more about you content and community, not how you consume the info. And in you encounter that on a frequent basis, well.....
The "seriousness" of the discussions are dependant on how you moderate and manage your community (group of people, not the platform). Plenty of examples of subreddits (and even Facebook groups!!! incredible!!) where you can have a civilized and enriched communication where, with proper management, the participants can create value and a sense of "being a community" which is all of us point to be.
Obviously this is all wrong. These are nested HEADINGS, not nested comments, no ones gives a flying f about the RE: RE: RE: RE: etc.. And when you click on one heading you are being redirected to some quote of a quote/reply buried in between God knows what replies or page you are. You are mixing the WORST of the 2 approaches. The nested comments are about better UX not how you get to a page in a topic.
Just accept you flat viewers are a minority. NOTHING wrong with that, it is what it is and for that reason, at least for me, it would be wise the user can choose between the two layouts.
Suzanne O
Well-known member
@smallwheels
You only gotta look at what James Brown's posted up to realise that having nested replies is stupid.
Imagine every bad post with those nested replies. It would ruin the forum.
The only place for that plugin is if you were using newspaper articles.
My local newspaper that is online does this with moderated replies.
You only gotta look at what James Brown's posted up to realise that having nested replies is stupid.
Imagine every bad post with those nested replies. It would ruin the forum.
The only place for that plugin is if you were using newspaper articles.
My local newspaper that is online does this with moderated replies.
Ingenious
Well-known member
DPReview is so much better after this conversion to Xenforo. The threaded view of old was terrible and whilst you could turn it off, it would randomly come back and you'd need to find some obscure option to reenable it. I'm impressed at how much has carried over, it didn't even log me out as far as I'm aware, well done to the staff who did the conversion.
Just to be able to properly "like" content with that like attributed to you is such a help to show where support is coming from.
I'm sure there are die-hards who hate the change, there always will be. My only gripe, same as before, way too many terrible ads. The site is not viable without advert blockers and I would never use it on mobile as a result.
Just to be able to properly "like" content with that like attributed to you is such a help to show where support is coming from.
I'm sure there are die-hards who hate the change, there always will be. My only gripe, same as before, way too many terrible ads. The site is not viable without advert blockers and I would never use it on mobile as a result.
MySiteGuy
Well-known member
And yet, here you are.
smallwheels
Well-known member
Possibly you could have a look at the thread topic and relate to what you have been posting about in this thread...
Only if you do local optimization for one single situation and leave out the majority of situations. While the advantage is that it is easier to follow various side discussions in a stringent way it is way more complicated to follow all answers in a given thread. The more, if the thread becomes very long, you've already read parts and a lot of sidethreads have been started.
Also, to make threaded comments work properly you need two things: Each answer has to have a posting that it refers to (technically) to be able to create the threads. Which is not the case in most forum software today I'd assume. You had a system like that in the usenet where the references were part of the headers. How threads were displayed was fully dependent from the usenet client that you used. Some had some kind of threading, some did not. The only client that had a somewhat perfect UX was MacSoup: It had a graphical threaded view that made it easy to keep the overview and it had a ton of options for (auto) filtering and keyboard shortcuts to jump and navigate between postings. This made using theading a breeze. Today, typically more than half of the visitors are using smartphones: No keyboard and limited screen space. These two factors alone make threaded views pretty cumbersome to use. How cumbersome depends from the implementation. So the second factor to make threaded views helpful is a really decent implementation, that is easy to use, is actually useful and works on smartphones as well. I am yet to see such an implementation.
So today in typical scenarios often threaded views are rather a disadvantage than an advantage for a bigger part of the users in my opinion. And can become a nightmare, depending from how they are implemented. Nothing agains having both views, threaded and unthreaded as an alternative view - would be interesting to do an a-b-test and to see, what the useres prefer in practice and which view creates more engagement and participation. But I still don't get what this discussion should have to do with the thread topic.
This is mainly a question of the culture of the forum and of the moderation. I don't have issues with this im my forum but in many forums the signal to noise ratio makes them a waste of time to read if you are digging for information. But: With platforms like reddit this is even worse in my opinion.
Why this personal attack? I did not talk about my forum. I read a lot of forums and also participate in many that use different forum softwares and different approaches. For me, the threaded views (while being preferable in theory) turned out to be the worst nightmare from a usage perspective in practice - and I don't even visit using a smartphone normally.
How do you now? Is it maybe just because you have a different opinion and think every decent person has obviously to share your opinion? Does not sound like a proven, validated or at least credible statement...