re: re:

[dr_tectonic]

Okay, having just been thoroughly confused detangling what was in response to what over yonder on another site, here's the new rule. Pay attention, everybody who might ever develop social software of whatever type:

If you allow comments? Thread them.

Period.

I don't care if it's more work. I don't care if it doesn't play nicely with your infrastructure. When people are saying things, they're usually saying them in response to something else that has been said, and making it easy to see how these things line up with one another is essential to the actual "communication" part of that whole saying stuff thing you're enabling. Otherwise it's all just half a cell-phone conversation in public, which is both useless and annoying.

Comments are threaded. ALWAYS.

I have decreed it! Now make it so!

Comments

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

I think you are thinking about this a little too much and missing the bit where it is a DECREE and people are supposed to ACCEDE to my DEMANDS! *a-HEM!*

I almost agree that pure feedback doesn't need to be threaded, except that if the feedback is publicly posted, there is always communication amongst the commenters (because somebody's going to be guilty of being Wrong On The Internet), which turns it back into a conversation. And maybe things should remain germane to the original subject, but they're not gonna.

Any back-and-forth communication will always diverge and digress. I kinda think it's better to just give it up and go with the flow. Social animals will always turn communication into as discussion, no matter what the restrictions of the medium, so tech might as well support it naturally instead of forcing the evolution of crazy hacks like use of Twitter's @name notation on Facebook. Right?

[nehrlich.livejournal.com]

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.

Or something.

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

It is decree-able if all designs support the same goal of making things convenient for ME...

[nehrlich.livejournal.com]

I am shown.

[k8cre8.livejournal.com]

Have you seen Google Wave? Because it allows you to actually do both. http://wave.google.com/ It even translates, live. It's slick.