dr_tectonic: (commanding the minions)
dr_tectonic ([personal profile] dr_tectonic) wrote2009-09-14 09:28 pm

re: re:

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!

Re #3

[identity profile] detailbear.livejournal.com 2009-09-15 05:00 pm (UTC)(link)
Part of it is the need for either sign-ons or cookies to implement this. Sign-ons are considered too much trouble and cookies are considered to be evil by many.

Re: Re #3

[identity profile] flwyd.livejournal.com 2009-09-15 05:30 pm (UTC)(link)
From LiveJournal to phpbb, logging in is a pretty standard feature. And if you told me I can skip comments I've already logged in, I'm going straight to the sign-up link as a trouble-saving measure.