Is there any add-on that can summarise all replies from a thread?

[Sumanta0018]

Hi,
Is there any add-on that can summarise all replies from a thread? We have many threads on our website that go up to 100 pages. Honestly, it would be hugely beneficial if we could use an AI-powered add-on to summarise all replies from a particular thread and post it as a summary.

The add-on could work like this:

• If a thread has fewer than 30 replies, the thread summary feature cannot be used.
• If a thread has more than 30 replies, only then will the thread summary feature be available.
• Additionally, there should be user group-level permissions to control who can use the feature.

 

[Deleted member 184953]

AI now has the capability to generate tags, moderate users, respond to questions, and will soon be able to summarize threads, In the near future, AI may create a XenForo account and launch its own forum, then CAPTCHA system will pose the question "Are you a human?" to prevent real humans from registering on it.

 

[Digital Doctor]

Xenforo Threads are for chit chat, not information. They aren’t about presenting improving knowledge over time. Threads have worsening information density over time.

Threaded threads (Reddit, Early vbulletin) are superior, but still not great.

Google likes threaded threads because they yield more readable information.

 

[Digital Doctor]

summary feature

Great idea.

Probably not possible, maybe ChatGPT could do it.

Can you provide example threads here on xenforo.com and show what is the useful information on that specific thread and how will the summary be presented ?

@Xon has an addon called threadmarks that allows for the best important posts to be highlighted.

 

[Stuart Wright]

Xenforo Threads are for chit chat, not information. They aren’t about presenting improving knowledge over time. Threads have worsening information density over time.

Threaded threads (Reddit, Early vbulletin) are superior, but still not great.

Google likes threaded threads because they yield more readable information.

I disagree. Forum threads are a better repository of historical knowledge and advice than other platforms like Reddit and Facebook groups.
I’d like to visit your sources to read how they are not.

On the question of summarising threads, would you rather have your visitors open 1 page to read a summary or open lots of pages to get the full thread story?
From a business perspective, thread summaries are a very bad idea.

 

[ENF]

From a business perspective, thread summaries are a very bad idea.

Would agree with this. Adding such summaries means one view to get the information and then they (readers) leave the site. There's nothing left for the reader to do after seeing the summary and typically would be less inclined to add replies.

Sites that rely on clicks, page views & contributions would see these numbers trend downward. Moreover, search engines would pick up these summaries and therefore display these in search results where a reader doesn't need to click or read further and thus dropping overall engagement and views on the source site.

Some may argue that the summaries would drive search traffic to their sites, but an educated guess says that those sites would see overall numbers drop over time.

 

[Mendalla]

Circle has this feature now. If there are more than 5 comments on a post, it uses Gemini to create a summary at the top. Mostly works but I tend to skim over it. Reading it is often as much work as just eyeballing the discussion.

The one oddity I have noticed is that the Circle site I am on has members from multiple countries (mostly European) and languages and we still aren't sure how it decides what language to use for the summary. All posts and comments are supposed to be in English, but sometimes it summarizes in the language of the original poster so we have summaries in Dutch, Finnish, Swedish, and so on as well as English. However, that's not consistent so I don't think it's as simple as it using the OP's location. Perhaps if they include some of their own language in the post, but I haven't done a study to confirm that. Found it hilarious the first time it happened, though.

 

[AjayJunkies]

Sites that rely on clicks, page views & contributions would see these numbers trend downward. Moreover, search engines would pick up these summaries and therefore display these in search results where a reader doesn't need to click or read further and thus dropping overall engagement and views on the source site.

Some may argue that the summaries would drive search traffic to their sites, but an educated guess says that those sites would see overall numbers drop over time.

Some thoughts:
1. What we, as forum admins want, may not be what users want. Forum admins want more traffic, more page views, and therefore more adsense dollars. But visitors want quick, accurate answers (and in that order). No one actually wants to read through 100 meandering pages of forum replies for transactional questions.
2. LLMs are already generating summaries off of our content and presenting summarized content to users. That dam has busted open. Zero click searches have already been studied to have dramatically increased on Google.

 

[Digital Doctor]

On the question of summarising threads, would you rather have your visitors open 1 page to read a summary or open lots of pages to get the full thread story?

those are different visitors.

some will not click on 7 pages of threads.

 

[Stuart Wright]

those are different visitors.

some will not click on 7 pages of threads.

No, and personally I dislike long threads and there is no doubting that having a summary would be useful to people. But page views = £ and we need as many as we can possibly get, so I'm not about to do anything to reduce them.

 

[Alpha1]

From a business perspective, thread summaries are a very bad idea.

I think this depends. The way I see AI summaries implemented so far I agree with you. A summary should be like a movie trailer: It should give you an enticing preview, so you will want to see it. An enticing summary of what the thread has to offer and the topics discussed (preferably with links), not a rundown of who said what.
I think a good way AI could be used is to let is create a Table of Content for a thread. So that readers can see the various topics and a link to where it starts.

Links in a summary as well as AI generated Table of Content would lead to more page views. Not less.

 

[Digital Doctor]

But page views = £ and we need as many as we can possibly get

$hort term gain.
Googlers don't read 7 pages, look for other sources after your site, Google downranks you.
Long term pain.

Summarized thread, googlers find the information they need. more registrations, google upranks you, your site does better.

I dislike long threads

The vast majority do.


The idea that you'd run your site differently than what you want is a weird take.

 

[Digital Doctor]

2. LLMs are already generating summaries off of our content and presenting summarized content to users. That dam has busted open. Zero click searches have already been studied to have dramatically increased on Google.

you mean Google uses Gemini to present summaries to Googlers ?

It seems to work very well. I'm learning how to do Dataview queries for Obsidian and the Gemini summaries are great.

 

[Sal Collaziano]

Hi,
Is there any add-on that can summarise all replies from a thread? We have many threads on our website that go up to 100 pages. Honestly, it would be hugely beneficial if we could use an AI-powered add-on to summarise all replies from a particular thread and post it as a summary.

The add-on could work like this:

• If a thread has fewer than 30 replies, the thread summary feature cannot be used.
• If a thread has more than 30 replies, only then will the thread summary feature be available.
• Additionally, there should be user group-level permissions to control who can use the feature.

Yes, here:

AI Summary Generation

Aug 24, 2025

Add the functionality to create AI generate summaries for discussions

• Sal Collaziano
• a.i. ai generated ai generation artificial intelligence post summary summary tldr topic summary
• Add-ons [2.x]

 

[Alvin63]

I think it's called a moderator

 

[Stuart Wright]

$hort term gain.

We disagree. I'm open to new ideas but I've been doing this for 25 years and right now, I don't think thread summaries will be a long term benefit.