
FeX: Forum Explorer – Rethinking how we interact with threaded conversations - merqurio
https://www.mcnutt.in/forum-explorer/
======
taliesinb
Funny story, I had almost exactly the same idea in 2013 and prototyped it in
Mathematica (probably a lot of people have had this idea). Here's a screenshot
of some random thread that I happened to visualize (comments were visible as
tooltips in my rough and ready implementation):
[https://imgur.com/a/9xfw6cA](https://imgur.com/a/9xfw6cA) (color represents
common authorship, size is comment length). I didn't have the Javascript chops
to do anything usable, let alone as polished as the linked Chrome plugin;
kudos to the author!

Another thing I was doing at the time was visualizing Twitter and Facebook
friend graphs, and the first insight there was to deliberately drop the 'ego'
node, as it destroys any hope of effectively showing community structure of
the friends themselves (it also carries no extra information as everyone is
necessarily connected to the ego).

So perhaps a similar thing would be effective for threaded conversations: if
you drop the root node, disconnected discussions will become separate trees in
the visualization, which will help with efficient use of space, and the tail
of singleton comments that no one replied to will become isolated disks that
can space-fill the background. Switching to an actual rectangular tree layout
as I used in my prototype will also help in that one consistent direction
(down) represents nested depth.

~~~
ventedfins
I've talked to a few people who've had similar ideas! In fact there is a
pretty long history of people in visualization/hci communities creating
applications like this. There's an extended abstract that goes along with this
work that details this history.

Dropping the root node is an interesting idea!

~~~
taliesinb
Do you mind linking to the abstract? Would like to read that history.

~~~
ventedfins
I'm trying to figure out if i'm allowed to post it publicly yet, in the mean
time shoot me a message (on say twitter @_mcnutt_) and I'll send it to you

~~~
ventedfins
Follow up here it is:
[https://github.com/mcnuttandrew/mcnuttandrew.github.io/blob/...](https://github.com/mcnuttandrew/mcnuttandrew.github.io/blob/master/assets/forum-
explorer-paper.pdf)

------
davidy123
I'm sorry to be a cynic. I love graphs. The web is a graph, web pages are
graphs, linked data, machine learning all use graphs. And they can look really
cool. I especially loved the hyperbolic graphs that were the rage a decade or
two ago. I don't know how many projects I've dropped this type of viz in. Then
removed it, because there are three different reactions from end users: It's
scary and confusing, it looks neat but it's never used, or it looks neat and
it's clicked on a few times. I hope as we move into massive data they become
digestable for ordinary UI, but until then they're mostly actually useful for
specific edge cases.

------
duxup
I like the idea although I can't help but think the visualization sort of
draws me to comments with lots of responses....and on HN that is ok.

On sites that heavily rely / encourage getting responses such as Twitter I
worry it just encourages posts that are trite, obnoxious and such as those get
the most responses.

Granted this is a visualization tool so it's not "responsible" for issues that
are largely human / platform issues.

~~~
kolinko
+1.

I like that mini-summaries on the left-hand side ("subconversations about
XX"), but the graph view seems to prioritise responses with the maximum amount
of comments.

E.g. if there is a flame-war going on in one of the subthreads, it will be
more visible than a highly rated comment with a few interesting subcomments.

~~~
ventedfins
I know what y'all mean. As i've used the extension myself I find myself
reading a really different type of comments then when i read linearly. It
makes it easier to find people have discussions (which are, admittedly, often
arguments), and it makes it easier to see when a couple people are just all
over the conversation.

------
miki123211
Can someone explain what exactly does this do? I'm a screen reader user and it
seems totally inaccessible.

~~~
jamesgeck0
It's not particularly easy to use for people without screen readers either. A
pane on the left shows a DAG, with nodes representing Hacker News comments
extending from a central node. Mousing over a node shows the comment in a pane
on the right. It's impossible to move the mouse pointer from the left pane to
the right without changing the visible comment.

~~~
ventedfins
>It's not particularly easy to use for people without screen readers either.

That's very true. This hasn't really been designed around screen readers,
making this type of graph + comment tree interface work accessibly well is a
really interesting challenge!

>It's impossible to move the mouse pointer from the left pane to the right
without changing the visible comment.

If you click anywhere on the graph then it locks the current comment
selection. You can then click to unlock!

------
ventedfins
Hi hackernews! I'm the author of this site/chrome extension/app. I'm happy to
answer any questions you might have/field any comments

~~~
mthoms
Very cool.

I've got to admit though, I'm a little jaded towards "Chrome only" extensions.
Is there a reason you couldn't build this in Firefox?

As web developers, we've really got to stop this practice lest the web become
further fragmented.

Anyways, I don't want to come down on you specifically - I realize this is
probably just an MVP. You did a great job.

~~~
jodrellblank
Is there a reason _you_ can't build this in FireFox?

How does "someone built a Chrome extension" justify you asking them to explain
themselves for why they didn't build it the way you want?

~~~
mthoms
Questioning the choice of browser platform is a perfectly valid question (for
obvious reasons that I shouldn't need to get into on HN).

OP seems to agree with the sentiment, so I'm not sure why you're bothered.

~~~
jodrellblank
Asking about the choice of browser platform out of curiosity, might be a
perfectly valid question.

 _Questioning_ the choice (that is, implying it's wrong), asking for whether
the reason is "good" as a value judgement, stating outright that "we have to
do better", is not perfectly valid. It's rude.

~~~
mthoms
Fair point(s) when taken out of context. But considering (a) I tempered that
implied criticism with glowing praise for their work and (b) clarified that I
wasn't targeted the criticism at them _personally_ , it seems to me you're
looking a little too hard for something to be offended about.

I'm passionate about protecting the open web because I believe a modern and
free democratic society _literally_ depends on it. And yes, I know that sounds
quite dramatic, but I believe it wholeheartedly.

------
JohnFen
That page has a major layout issue for me: it appears to have a fixed height
with no vertical scrollbar, so the bottom portion of the page is completely
inaccessible to me even if I maximize the window.

Is that part of what you're trying to test, or is it just an unimportant
artifact of the test page?

Also, I'm not actually on board with the visualization -- it just makes
everything more confusing and harder to follow. But that might be my personal
idiocy.

~~~
jolmg
It also happens to me. The graph resizes and reorganizes as the window size is
adjusted, but it always shrinks less than it should. There's always a part of
the graph that goes beyond the bottom of the window.

~~~
ventedfins
What type of browser are y'all on? I'd love to fix this issue. It would be a
big help if you would file me an issue here
[https://github.com/mcnuttandrew/forum-
explorer/issues](https://github.com/mcnuttandrew/forum-explorer/issues)

~~~
jolmg
[https://github.com/mcnuttandrew/forum-
explorer/issues/68](https://github.com/mcnuttandrew/forum-explorer/issues/68)

JohnFen's may more accurately be this other issue:

[https://github.com/mcnuttandrew/forum-
explorer/issues/69](https://github.com/mcnuttandrew/forum-explorer/issues/69)

I also made an issue for how it looks on Chrome in Android:

[https://github.com/mcnuttandrew/forum-
explorer/issues/70](https://github.com/mcnuttandrew/forum-explorer/issues/70)

On checking Firefox on Android, I wonder if this is the platform JohnFen was
trying:

[https://github.com/mcnuttandrew/forum-
explorer/issues/71](https://github.com/mcnuttandrew/forum-explorer/issues/71)

~~~
JohnFen
Yes, my issue appears to be #69. I'm using Waterfox on a desktop.

~~~
ventedfins
i think these issues should be addressed now? let me know if not

------
paulgb
Ooh, this is neat, thanks for sharing! I made something similar for Twitter
conversations (shameless plug: [https://treeverse.app](https://treeverse.app))
so it's neat to see the UI decisions you made, especially the timeline
interaction.

~~~
ventedfins
I love treeverse! I spent a lot of time looking at treeverse when I was
building forum explorer. Did you see that it got used in this paper
[https://mw18.mwconf.org/paper/to-journey-in-twitter-
canoes-m...](https://mw18.mwconf.org/paper/to-journey-in-twitter-canoes-
methods-to-understand-the-mechanisms-and-meaning-in-twitter-conversations/)

~~~
paulgb
I did not see that, thanks for the link! Glad I could be an influence :)

------
AndrewHampton
Although I believe it was a good idea to remove them, I miss the vote score
shown on comments. I had a script that would highlight the top comments. This
would frequently reveal insightful comments 2 or 3 levels deep in a random
thread I would have otherwise missed.

------
Deimorz
Reminds me a little of the "Wikum" project that was worked on at MIT:
[http://wikum.csail.mit.edu/](http://wikum.csail.mit.edu/)

~~~
ventedfins
That's super cool! I hadn't seen that, very neat. That reminds me a lot of
this [https://github.com/enamulh/ConVis](https://github.com/enamulh/ConVis)

------
bryanrasmussen
I really hate these, although of course I like the way they look. But the
normal way is I come in I start reading there - I need to click on stuff to
read things, I loose the context of where I was, if I am hovering nodes I see
that node - oh there's a link in the content I want to click on oops I hovered
another node I need to go back and hover the node I was on before, click it to
lock it in place and then go over to other side of the page to click on the
link I wanted to look at.

But I sure do like graphs.

------
Eiriksmal
[https://www.mcnutt.in/forum-
explorer/?id=19615895](https://www.mcnutt.in/forum-explorer/?id=19615895)

The circular tree your code generates is very cool. That presentation makes it
a lot easier to see how the different threads relate than a flat tree
structure.

It's especially fun to see how the topics weave through the conversations.
Though commenters mostly stick to one topic on a particular tree, some of the
same topics appear on siblings of adjacent trees.

------
magicalhippo
Slight issue, graph node highlight color should be the same as comment
highlight color.

Some of the nodes in a vertical tree, for example here[1], are very close to
each other while there is room for them to be a bit more separated.

Comment scrollbar goes beyond window edge.

Firefox 67.0b18 64bit Windows 10.

Overall looks neat and interesting, thanks for sharing.

[1]: [https://www.mcnutt.in/forum-
explorer/?id=19902965](https://www.mcnutt.in/forum-explorer/?id=19902965)

------
daww
Looks like something I did some time ago[0], nice to see that this space is
being explored. Wikum[1] from MIT's CSAIL is also an interesting alternative.

[0] [https://mrandri19.github.io/comments-as-a-
graph/?thread=hn3](https://mrandri19.github.io/comments-as-a-
graph/?thread=hn3)

[1] [http://wikum.csail.mit.edu/](http://wikum.csail.mit.edu/)

------
torvald
Nice. I wonder if this something like this could be applied to code, to easier
get a overview of how classes and functions relate to each other.

~~~
cheschire
Visual Studio provides a feature called Code Map. To create them you need VS
Enterprise, but the other versions can open them.

[https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/visualstudio/modeling/map-d...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/visualstudio/modeling/map-dependencies-across-your-solutions?view=vs-2019)

------
sitkack
This is freak'n awesome. Please, we need to do more experiments like this.
There are small usability nits about things going out of focus and changing
when you move the mouse but for the most part, it is pretty good.

I'd like to see sentiment analysis color code the nodes and maybe node to node
distance represent response time. And link width represent number of
characters in post.

------
Already__Taken
Some visual feedback would be nice, I think that;

* The circle should plot threads clockwise newest<->oldest (or reversible?)

* Node connection length should be the reply delay in the chain

* Node size should reflect comment size

* Node color/opacity should reflect comment score/vote amount (if present, which HN doesn't have.)

------
chaostheory
I feel the main issue with forum UI is the limitation of 2 dimensions. Once AR
and VR become more mainstream with higher resolution, I predict we'll have
more interesting conversation UI

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zestyping
Nice! The Chrome extension description sounds like it works on more than just
Hacker News. What kinds of threaded discussions does this work on? (e.g.
Disqus? Reddit? Facebook?)

------
vanous
Might be very nice, but unfortunately all I see are many lines that say
"loading". Is this intended for people with "web browsers" or is it only for
those who installed the "Google Chrome" software?

~~~
ventedfins
The demo page (which is linked above) should transform those loading message
into a list of threads you can click into. Would you mind filing a bug over on
[https://github.com/mcnuttandrew/forum-
explorer](https://github.com/mcnuttandrew/forum-explorer) ?

------
Fnoord
Have you considered keybinds? Vim-like keybinds, for example?

------
umurgdk
Have you seen arguman.org ? Similar ideas (visual wise).

