

Mozilla-Knight's Beyond Comment Threads Challenge - knowtheory
https://drumbeat.org/en-US/challenges/beyond-comment-threads/

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mrspeaker
Not really addressing the concerns they seem to be dealing with in the
article, but "embedded comment threads" was my favourite thing about Google
Wave - you could embed a thread anywhere (like, one wave for each blog post)
and see/reply followups directly from your mail client (well, wave client).

That way you weren't making little "data islands" all around the internet
(that you're not likely to get back to) and there was more chance that a given
idea/topic would be more thoroughly discussed. In theory!

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edvinasbartkus
I am working on a project Comment Reader. It's a tool to follow updates on
comments through different sites or singles pages.

In my view the biggest value it would have that you can track comments from
sharing portals like reddit,HN and others.

Idea came by other person who don't want to subscribe email updates after
leaving comment in some regular site but want to know if there are replies.

I have told about it to several people but they weren't that much excited. As
it's almost ready for launch I will make it public.

If you have idea how smartly it can help someone, please let's talk :)
<http://comreapp.com/>

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phillipadsmith
Okay, let's see it already! :-)

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knowtheory
These challenges are interesting. The space for collaboration between
journalism and tech seems to be really hot right now.

I can't help but think that with all the stuff that's been thought of and
implemented in commenting systems like slashdot and reddit and hacker news,
that we've plateaued out, and it's time to think of systems that don't involve
direct mass communication between participants.

Hacker News works alright, but if you look at Slashdot there's just so much
content for so little value.

~~~
miraj
but how do we cross-check & cross-verify comments & opinions across various
web/media/news outlets? for example if this current challenge info is
posted/covered on reddit, boing boing, slashdot, hackernews etc.

it would be really beneficial if we could have a unified commenting system
that can aggregate feedbacks from all publishing mediums and social-media
channels. that in itself could create a single narrative & storyline for each
story/news article on a global scale.

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jokermatt999
I actually think some separation of comments is a good thing. Without it,
discussion is going to fall to the lowest common denominator. It'd be like
bringing together people at a scientific conference and some folks at bar
because they happened to be discussing the same topic. The scientists will
have one perspective, and the average Joe will likely have another. To combine
them would probably just make the discussion worse for everyone.

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kaizenfury7
Here's my entry:

<http://threadit.kaizenrails.com/discussions/691>

I'm experimenting with redesigning thread layout to focus on context and
making it easier to follow and comprehend a complicated thread.

It's not as ambitious as other ideas out there, but I feel this is a
improvement over what we have currently.

~~~
jokermatt999
I actually found this more confusing. My immediate thought of the up/down
arrows was that they'd up/downvote the comments, but they instead take you to
others. I don't really get how they're grouped either, since they don't seem
to be replies...

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kaizenfury7
Here's an example of a HN comment with 200+ comments:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2530963>

Here's the same thread in my layout:

<http://threadit.kaizenrails.com/discussions/839>

~~~
phillipadsmith
I have to admit, I don't immediately get it. Kudos to you for hacking on
comment thread presentation and interaction, however. :)

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riffraff
as most things, this could be attacked with semantic web technologies,
specifically SIOC[1] does this. Alas, 12 years after the RDF standard, the
semweb has still not been widely embraced.

[1] <http://sioc-project.org/>

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knowtheory
I sort of think that the focus on commenting and debate itself is possibly
distracting. I think it'd be interesting to see what people think about how
users could interact with news more, rather than just interacting with each
other.

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jerf
What _exactly_ is "news", as you are using the word, and how _exactly_ are you
proposing that people interact with it? And how exactly is the form of
interaction you are seeking already not being done in a world of freely
available blogs?

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knowtheory
Funny you should ask!

I think the focus on news pieces as being long form text documents is
fundamentally flawed. The paragraph (or proposition or whatever) is probably a
more natural atomic unit, and makes a bunch of the problems currently plaguing
how we interact with news content/knowledge go away.

The idea i've been thinking about, is why can't we harken back to the days of
text-based adventures (really the distilled essence of user interaction), and
make news queryable and navigable by users?

You get to know what your users what to know about a topic, and how they
explore your content, and you can get that info w/o all the social overhead
and shouting matchings.

~~~
jerf
Now I'm glad I asked; I was ready to go off on another tangent that would not
have been related.

I've often thought that the New York Times ought to be a wiki, not in the
sense that it is publicly editable, but in the sense that the staff ought to
be linking stuff together much more aggressively. Why isn't there a page on
the New York Times I can go to that is Their Index for Guam? (Deliberately
choosing a neutral topic to avoid trigger political reactions.) All their
stories collected, sorted, in some chronological order, etc., with new stories
added as they come in. The value of the NYT is greatly lessened by being an
undifferentiated mass of articles. It would even help them in their own
research.

~~~
knowtheory
How dare you mention Guam! The US military's decision to move pacific
operations there is going to destroy the culture and subject the populace to
the sorts of abuses they're guilty of in Okinawa!

Okay, i'm kidding. :)

The real problem with hyperlinking is that it's difficult and time consuming.
Wikipedia can kinda manage it because there are thousands of Wikipedians with
a lot of free time. The NYTimes is the opposite. They're a smallish
organization trying to do original news reporting and research, and put it up
online. Time spent deciding what hyperlinks to put where are a distraction
from the other stuff they could be doing.

That's why time has been spent on systems like Apture, which are frankly,
completely useless. Automated systems can't provide the sorts of editorial
control that users actually want to find out more info.

In short, wikis are really hard for organizations to build and maintain, if
it's not core to what it is that they do. And they're particularly hard for
quick moving targets.

