

Ask HN: Would you like to have a whiteboard for HN comments? - tokenadult

I wonder how many Hacker News participants would like to use visual diagrams or charts, perhaps simply hand-drawn, to add to their comments on submitted links. I tend to think visually, but I hardly ever show people sketches or diagrams in online discussions because the typical technology for online discussion isn't friendly for that.<p>Today, most all of us have one possible workaround for sharing visual information in comments.<p>1) Draw a drawing or plot a chart with any convenient software (including hand-drawing software) installed on one's own computer.<p>2) Save the drawing as a file in some highly universal format browsers can handle, e.g. .GIF.<p>3) Post the drawing to the Web on some website one can submit files to.<p>4) Post the link in the comment and hope readers follow the link.<p>That's not all bad. That's much better than most of us can do during a live telephone conversation. But maybe more convenience would bring more diagrams into online discussion, and improve the quality of discussion of some issues. Edwin Tufte<p>http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a?topic_id=1<p>of course has great writings about how to use diagrams to analyze and present data better, and there are many other guides to that important topic.<p>P.S. One good example of online use of diagrams to dispel a common misconception is<p>http://www.iapsych.com/iqach.pdf<p>which expresses an idea that can apply to other issues about correlations.
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unalone
I'd say that's too complicated a process. Better to make a good whiteboard
program well-known so people start using it.

Part of HN is its simplicity. Get rid of that and you have a completely
different website, replete with users who'd join just to try out the _kewl
whiteboard_.

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DanielBMarkham
Yes

