Yes, thinking about it too much. Writing a blog post in penance to get all those extra thoughts out of my overactive head.
I agree to some extent that we should go with the flow, but I actually agree with Joel's point which suggests that threading is the beginning of the slippery slope to the insane line-by-line nit-picking of Usenet. Forcing people to come up with the crazy hacks reminds commenters that they are doing something undesired, so they'll only do it if necessary. Supporting conversation spinoff natively encourages that behavior.
As usual for me these days, that means it boils down to a design question - what behavior do you want to encourage? Therefore, it is not decree-able, as different designs support different goals.
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Date: 2009-09-15 05:51 am (UTC)I agree to some extent that we should go with the flow, but I actually agree with Joel's point which suggests that threading is the beginning of the slippery slope to the insane line-by-line nit-picking of Usenet. Forcing people to come up with the crazy hacks reminds commenters that they are doing something undesired, so they'll only do it if necessary. Supporting conversation spinoff natively encourages that behavior.
As usual for me these days, that means it boils down to a design question - what behavior do you want to encourage? Therefore, it is not decree-able, as different designs support different goals.
Or something.