
Welcome to DiscDAG - mr_tyzic
https://www.solipsys.co.uk/DiscDAG.html
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nayuki
This project is called DiscDAG, and the description says you can reply to
multiple threads all at once. Too bad the example image only shows branching
and not merging. It hides the key differentiator of the system.

If you only happen to allow branching but not merging, then the result can be
represented in a tree. Indeed, this is how Hacker News, Reddit, Slashdot, and
mailing lists visually present their threaded discussions.

Also note that email has a header named "References" which can point to
multiple email message IDs, so there is some existing infrastructure that can
express a DAG. Too bad no email clients use it this way; every client I've
seen will visually attach each email message to zero or one parent.

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GistNoesis
It has some good aspects as the ability to branch allow to focus on some
specific details more easily.

This particular solution seems to be lacking some mechanism to merge the
discussion back together so that the tree doesn't branch out ad infinitum.

It also doesn't solve the problem of collaborative list building easily.

It's also simplifying the problem as it is not a asynchronous system but
rather a standard single point of truth database.

The way I see all these collaborative tools is that they are trying to make up
for their users lack of basic algorithmic knowledge. They are constraining the
users into a specific point of view. But this is usually not enough because
the user will want to do something which isn't done easily in this framework
and new absurd phenomenons similar to top posting will emerge.

Database tools and basic algorithmic structures have been known for a long
time now. The usual structures needed are lists, queues, sets, graphs, tags,
custom structs. Standard database tools can do the collaborative part easily,
you just need a good front-end to make them available to your users for when
he needs them.

The alternative if you can't teach your user, is to have a nlp AI construct
the database automatically. That's what there is in tools like gmail to
automatically add to your agenda your flight reservations for example.

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fphhotchips
This looks/feels an awful lot like Google Wave did 10 years ago. At least
conceptually.

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alexmingoia
Email could work like this. Threading emails in a chronological list is just a
trend in clients. There’s no reason clients couldn’t do it like this, or
display emails like IM software threaded by author and sorted by last message
(I’ve been searching my entire life for an email client to thread IM-style).

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aidenn0
Outlook breaks e-mail threading. It's really quite annoying. Forget "e-mail
clients could do this" most e-mail clients written prior to 2000 did do this,
and many after do as well.

I think part of the point of TFA is that the fact that you don't control if
other people top-post or use crummy clients means you, in practice, can't get
this with e-mail, even though you theoretically could.

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harrylepotter
I like what this explores but it certainly seems to favor semi-continuous
threads of conversation rather than thousands of disparate discussions that
you'd normally have on social media. Getting a graph with a friendly-UX for
the latter would be quite difficult to achieve.

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ColinWright
This was born of frustration with email systems. So many now effectively force
you to "top-post", so in an email with three or four questions you tend to get
(a) only one answered, and (b) some text with no context.

I've always favoured in-line replies, but most email clients actively work
against that, and people are just generally too lazy to do the trimming. I
wrote about this some time ago[0].

So yes, this is intended for a single conversation, like a single email
thread. Each different discussion would get a different discussion, if you see
what I mean.

[0]
[https://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/WhyTopPostingHasWon.html?td07...](https://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/WhyTopPostingHasWon.html?td07hn)

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classified
While the diagnosis is obviously correct, this proposed cure will never take
except with OCD-ridden hair splitters (and there it won't be necessary). Why?
Because people would have to burn a glucose molecule for activating a brain
cell. That will never happen.

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Waterluvian
Somewhat related: this is how the mysterious texts in The Outer Wilds are all
written. They're arcs with many branching threads.

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ur-whale
Most normal folks have a hard time understanding the concept of linear email
threads.

And DiscDAG things DAGs are the cure?

Deluded is the word that springs to mind.

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j88439h84
It will get too wide, that's why HN and Reddit do it like they do.

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dictatorsunion
Amazing Idea！

