
Ask HN: What would graph-based discussions look like? - no-twist
When we look at the evolution of discussions on the internet, we can see that it started with lists in chronological order (traditional forums). Then trees arised as can be seen in mailing lists, Reddit or HackerNews. This datastructure can represent what a post is responding to (instead of quoting).<p>What is the next step? Do you think graphs are more expressive? What about going even further and model discussions as Hypergraphs or Multigraphs?
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dirkt
A tree is a natural structure, because often you respond to another post. A
graph would mean responding to several posts, which doesn't happen that often.

Usenet discussions have an additional structure on top of the answer-tree: You
can group discussions by subject/topic, changing the subject line when the
subject changes. So that would be a colored graph.

Good Usenet readers have a lot more features (e.g. marking posts as read,
killfiles) than anything that web-based discussions offer. I sometimes wish
that web UI's would implement this, too.

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kluck
I think there is a tendency to focus on finding an algorithm that determines
weither and how many discussions are "the top x". But really this is not the
point of discussions. The point is to maximize usefulness for the participants
(weither they actively participate or passively just read along). Also to
maximize usefulness in the long run, meaning discussions need to be archived
in a way that they can be re-started easily. One discussion basicly
concentrates the opinions and arguments around a certain topic, so the
starting point is a plain topic (like "discussion about application
containers") and not nessessarily a question (like "what do you think of
docker?").

The whole question is really interesting.

~~~
no-twist
I fully agree that there is a tendency to oversimplify the way online
discussions are sorted. This often leads to a system where the rich get richer
and it is difficult for new comments to get their audience; is it even obvious
what an up or down vote means? I am not sure, but it might help to have a
multi-dimensional voting system so there is a possibility to agree/disagree
with a comment without signaling bad quality.

For the second part, I think that in such a case it should be possible to
connect the question ("what do you think about docker?") to the overall topic
even after it was created. The structure should be flexible in a sense that a
topic can grow in all directions and can be referenced in multiple
discussions.

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alain94040
I'm interested in similar topics. I put together mockup on GitHub
([https://github.com/alain94040/arguably](https://github.com/alain94040/arguably)).
I could definitely use some more ideas.

What do you think of ordering and voting? What about discussions that go in
multiple directions?

~~~
manx
Your introduction is great, I like how you question that there is only one
right answer. This always annoys me on stack overflow. The answers are for
everybody, the author of the question is just one case.

But your mockups confuse me. I think there is more to discussion than just
pro/contra. Also I don't see anything about graphs. Did I miss something?

On voting I think that just up/down is not expressive enough. When somebody
downvotes, I cannot tell if they disagree or just want to tell me that my post
is too off topic or has bad quality. We need more choices. But this makes the
UX more complicated. Do you have an Idea?

What do you mean by discussion going in different directions? The branching
that happens in tree comment systems like this one?

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dragonwriter
> Do you think graphs are more expressive?

In principal, yes. Getting the UX right so that more than a few people will be
comfortable using it...

From working with mindmapping software I can see where graph (or multigraph)
presentation of discussions could work well.

> What about going even further and model discussions as Hypergraphs or
> Multigraphs?

I can see utility in annotated multigraphs, but I don't see hypergraphs
providing much that graphs don't already provide.

~~~
manx
Do you think something like Mindmapping interfaces are not suitable for "more
than a few people"?

I'm trying to think about other graph representations that are intuitive, but
nothing comes to my mind. Trees seem to have more possibilities.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Do you think something like Mindmapping interfaces are not suitable for
> "more than a few people"?

Well, given the limited apparent reach of mindmapping software compared to
more linear notetaking software, quite possibly; also, while vaguely similar,
its a different domain, and getting the right UI semantics is a new challenge
for discussions.

Also, discussion have a network effect, so accessibility to a broad audience
is going to be even more important for forums than for mindmapping (though
perhaps you could have a more linear, say tree-oriented, presentation along
with a power-user graph-oriented presentation. Not sure if that's really
viable.)

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manx
Very interesting question. Cross-posting on Reddit comes to my mind. We can
see Reddit as one big tree where the root node is Reddit. Directly connected
are all subreddits, which again act as trees to connect all starting posts in
one subreddit. Real cross-posts could be modeled with a graph, where one post
belongs to multiple subreddits.

