

Internet Forums Reimagined: The Future Of Online Discussions - Supermighty
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/internet-forums-reimagined-future-of-online-discussions/?utm_content=buffer39a04&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=hacker_news&utm_campaign=Buffer

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columbo
Most of these systems feel like skins on previous iterations (vbulletin,
usenet, irc, reddit). Here's the things I don't see and I'm pretty sure I know
why.

* The OP doesn't own the post, the OP is just the person that started the conversation at this time. Every time I open something controversial the first/top-voted reply is a counter-point. Typically a few days later there's a full-fledged counter-point article that (again) gets voted to the top. Instead these should exists in the same space. It should be possible to replace/modify the OP or directly challenge the topic without having to start another thread entirely.

* I want to see the people I'm interested in, topics they start, and topics that interest me. My front page should be custom (and no, I don't mean reddit subscriptions). Reddit subscriptions is a manual approach to what should be a fluid-dynamic system. I might subscribe to "ham-radio" find some people I enjoy talking to and if they subscribe to something else, like "shortwave-radio", then I should start seeing things from "shortwave-radio" that -they- found interesting.

* Bikeshedding should be embraced, there should be the concept of side-conversations. It's a part of our system. The problem with bikeshedding is that it is repeated ad-nauseum and the only current approach to solve it is to delete it and push people to some 300 page/dead/closed thread from 2003. When someone starts to bikeshed, and people begin to respond, they should go into a special area that takes them away from the main group. Really what's happening is a 'side-conversation' that has it's own value to the individuals participating. It's like going to a party and discussing the merits of the Death Star, I'm sure there are wikipedia pages that could answer all questions but sometimes people enjoy debating something.

* Arguments should be embraced, and hidden. When you get into a heated argument with someone there should be a system where slowly the conversation moves away from the main thread and becomes hidden from the rest of the community. Just like bikeshedding, there's no reason to bring people that aren't interested into the conversation. Eventually these threads should be deleted, they don't need to persist forever (you can always choose to do this by taking a screenshot).

None of these are easy problems, some of them would be near impossible given
current hardware.

~~~
pestaa
I love your suggestions from top to bottom. I'm very keen on forum software
development, and your comment is pure gold or pure diamond whichever can be
more purer.

------
patrickmay
Just as the majority of new languages tout features that were available in
Lisp 50 years ago, all of this new forum software recreates Usenet, poorly.

A compelling offering would build on netnews, not ignore it. In particular:

\- Threading. Real threading, with subtopics, not the impossible to follow
simplistic nested comments currently offered.

\- State. Remember which comments have been read and only show new content.

\- Killfiles. Let the user decide which topics and other participants to read
rather than requiring the forum owner to act as a censor.

\- Multiple clients. Allow the forum to be accessed by each user's preferred
forum client.

Perhaps there is a commercial opportunity for a company to provide the nntp
protocol and manage storage for fora that want rich discussion capabilities.

~~~
eksith
The alternative is going back to Usenet, which considering the current state
of affairs, is impossible.

Real threading is possible to an extent with nested comments (hidden until
expanded). There are some software that already offer this.

State is also available in some versions. Discourse does this to an extent and
I think Vanilla has a plugin for it.

Killfiles alternative would be an ignore list for users and subscribe feature
for specific tags which some forums already offer.

I'm not sure if NNTP is up to the task, but a similar massively distributed
system with persistent storage would likely be a solution.

There's also the aspect of familiarity. There are better ways to handle
discussion, but these would be jarring for someone accustomed to the "worse"
way of doing things for the past decade or so.

I also think forums would greatly benefit from having fewer features that are
absolutely necessary.

~~~
patrickmay
I agree wholeheartedly with your last sentence.

Thinking on it a little further, I don't see why nntp can't be reused. The
site would need a web-based Usenet client, hopefully superior to the one
offered by Google, storage for the private newsgroup, and an open port 119 on
the server.

It's all in the packaging. Damn, I was really hoping to get some real work
done this weekend....

------
NelsonMinar
It seems inevitable to me that Google is going to shut down Google Groups or
else fold it into Google+ in some unpleasant way. Maybe when that free option
is taken off the table there will be more room for a commercial solution.

~~~
ccera
Google Groups is used by such a tiny number of people, and has such a poverty
of functionality, that I'm fairly certain it has no measurable effect in
suppressing innovation in this area.

Whatever reasons there might be for why forums/discussions aren't getting any
better, the existence of Google Groups is not one of them.

~~~
freework
Google Groups is probably still the most popular hosted Usenet client. Back
when I was using Usenet for discussion (2005ish), almost everyone who was
still using usenet was using it via Google Groups.

By the way, Google Groups used to have a great UI but over the last fre years
they've changed around the design and it is horrible now.

------
trhaynes
I think Quora (<http://www.quora.com/>) and Branch (<http://www.branch.com/>)
are relevant here.

~~~
eksith
Branch is confusing to me. Quora is a plague.

Never heard of Branch before and I do find the premise interesting. But the
conversations seem too disjointed (a bit like Slashdot threads) with topics
going off in every direction. If there's a way to tone down the "subject ad-
lib" style tangents, it would be an interesting way to spend an afternoon.

~~~
fakeer
Branch is confusing to me too, but I haven't spent much time there.

Quora is a plague? How? Could you please elaborate?

Actually, I find few things on Quora very interesting and unique to it.

Like

\- You get an answer quickly(answers are mostly relevant), they usually
propagate to particular topics and people interested in those topics pick them
up.

\- Down-voting is not limited to a few cognoscenti, all they did was join a
forum quite early.

\- You can edit your answer/question and others' too, the latter needs to be
approved of course.

\- Identities are real(mostly IMHO).

\- Again, answering is not a cognoscenti-only, especially for wide
acceptance(a good answer is liked) or for the upper crest, unlike on other
forums where the _gods_ receive up-votes for an one line quip which doesn't
add anything to discussion, nth at all, or didn't make any sense to one
either. (this point is a bit of personal observation which is not very very
broad)

~~~
null_ptr
> Quora is a plague? How? Could you please elaborate?

Quora feels like the next experts-exchange. It allows search engines to index
its content but as a user you need to register before you can see it. So Quora
pages pop up as the first search results, but are actually useless to the vast
majority of people that click on them.

------
azinman2
Funny as there wasn't really anything re-imagined about the online discussions
-- they're still lists of effectively anonymous text.

I might be quite opinionated on this as much of my PhD thesis [1] was focused
on what could be new ways to interact with people online.

There are several core problems with the way discussions work right now.

1\. Too much content means you'll miss a lot. Sorting is usually effectively
random, especially in relation to what you'd find interesting. Summary is one
approach, but nothing has been executed spectacularly well compared to what
could be.

2\. The current design is purely a text entry (of only one comment) plus some
tiny representation of the poster. In real life, we focus more on the person
and what we can ascertain in order to determine credibility, if they're a jerk
or someone we want to talk to, etc.

3\. We're also making the assumption that keyboard-based text is the best &
only way to express ourselves. Video/images in abstract are just as vague --
I'm talking more specialized interactions to build up a "speech act" in some
new form/medium. Jeff Heer's sense.us [2] is just one of a million ways that
could be done in a more fine-grained goal-oriented fashion.

Plus text is much less interesting to look at than something pretty and
graphical.

4\. There are varying arguments about the goal of these discussions, but they
can at least be seen as

    
    
      a) correcting some non-participant's information (blog post, paper, link, etc)
    
      b) attempting to determine main/alternative arguments for/against something
    
      c) attempting to reach group consensus
    
      d) normal social interaction for social interaction purposes (which itself is wide ranging)
    
      e) establishing a sense of community, intrinsically linked to (d) but still different
    
      f) sharing general knowledge
    
      g) expressivity to react to something
    
    

Each of these sub-goals can be supported to a certain degree by existing
paradigms but clearly if one goal is much more important than the next then it
should be clear that new paradigms or designs are needed to better address one
extremely well.

It's also the case that many are unicorns: attempting to reach group consensus
is possible when thinking about software for small sets of people who need it,
but fails when you're thinking about something large-scale like say
'answering' political questions in the US. Trying to dissuade people of their
existing biases is a loosing battle. And there have been many tries at
something like this, mostly in the research community at places like CHI and
CSCW.

I personally think #2 is the most exciting, as that's what my PhD was about :)
The primary interface doesn't have to be just a huge amount of bottom-up
text... if we think more top-down we can gain a sense of a community,
discussion, sets of people in a more direct manner. Computational ability is
on our side to be able to compress large amounts of data by recognizing
varying dimensions in which to navigate. We don't have to just look at
'votes,' but can think about the larger arc of an individual across all of
their participation. That as a basis allows us to do what we can't do in real
life: segment, shift, and synthesize individuals into groups, style,
credibility, cultural position, social position, viewpoints and more.

[1] <http://azinman.com/pdfs/aaron_zinman_phd_disstertation.pdf>

[2] <http://hci.stanford.edu/jheer/files/jheer-thesis.pdf>

~~~
CamperBob2
Don't forget

    
    
       h) calling someone a Nazi

------
kanzure
I feel like someone could make a buck or two by offering a mail2forum gateway.
That way, you can appease all the people complaining about how they want a
phpbb-style forum (yes, I know phpbb was not first), and you can appease all
the people that want to use email. Except, every time I have worked on this
sort of tool, or seen others working on it, the community totally ignored it
and didn't use the forum side at all.. oops.

I wish there was a legitimately good version of Google Groups out there. At
this point, I can't decide which interface (Yahoo Groups versus Google Groups)
is worse. It's like trying to decide between SourceForge and LaunchPad... yeah
right.

~~~
betterunix
"I feel like someone could make a buck or two by offering a mail2forum
gateway"

There are already mail2news services that allow you to post to Usenet via
email, if for some reason you want to do that (e.g. if you are using anonymous
remailers).

"I wish there was a legitimately good version of Google Groups out there."

Usenet?

------
nodata
Online discussions are crap. Quickly derailed by well-meaning or not well-
meaning people, the original question or discussion is sidetracked by
something more interesting, or irrelevant.

I'd like to see structured evidence-based discussions that aim for a
conclusion without allowing people to talk in circles. Anecdotal evidence
would not be allowed. Anything off-topic would not be allowed.

HN gets derailed the whole time by something tangentially related to the
original posting, and I guess people like that: but we should also aim for
communities where structured discussion is possible.

Something more debate-like perhaps.

~~~
eksith
Your requirements make discussions not be discussions. This is how discussions
happen in the real world as well. We're not in Parliament or Congress where
specific laws and topics are to be discussed (and get filibustered anyway).

HN topics don't get "derailed" with tangents since threads exist for just that
contingency. While other things may get discussed, I think the majority
revolve around the topic at hand.

I'm not sure I'd like to participate in your "ideal" discussion forum. It
doesn't sound fun at all.

~~~
maxerickson
The way to try it would be to let thread owners pick the rules that were in
force. That way you can have a free flowing conversation in one thread and a
serious exploration in another. It also allows room for people to develop a
reputation for applying moderation in an even handed fashion (without
requiring a reputation to get started).

~~~
jiggy2011
You would have constant moderation dramas though, since you would need
moderators going over every thread and finding stuff that was off topic or
letting users flag it.

Then you would have a lot of disagreement about whether something was on topic
or not.

~~~
maxerickson
I would do it so that the thread owner was the moderator. There could still be
some baseline site rules, but each thread would be up to the owner to look
after (I suppose it would be nice to allow helpers). It should still be
possible to open threads without any extra rules.

Reddit sort of does this, at the subreddit level instead of the thread level.
But it also sort of isn't a discussion site anymore, it is something else.

~~~
jiggy2011
The issue with that is that you would probably get people starting a thread to
state some particular view and then simply deleting everything that disagreed
with them.

I remember this happening a lot in IRC with ban-happy ops and on smaller
forums. Eventually either everyone gets fed up and leaves or it just becomes
an echo chamber.

~~~
maxerickson
Well, the hope would be that instead of leaving people would go to more useful
threads.

I'm coming at it from the perspective that abuse will happen no matter what,
so focus on promoting good stuff, etc.

~~~
jiggy2011
Then you end up with the case where people only want to reply to threads from
certain members who then end up as defacto site moderators. You would also get
a lot of troll threads where someone would start a discussion, wait for people
to get involved and then just nuke the whole thread to piss people off.

People who are good at even-handed moderation in the pursuit of constructive
discussion are actually fairly rare; it's a skill most people don't posses as
they let emotion and bias get in the way.

I've seen a number of online communities combust over the years due to either
neglect or infighting, the few that remain do so because they have a strong
moderation team with a clear common goal.

I think the answer is to separate discussion sites from other sites which have
a different goal. Stack overflow is an example of this.

------
pessimism
You should check out Microcosm (<http://microco.sm/>), which is my favourite
of the upcoming paid forum CMSes out there.

The API documentation for Microcosm is seriously impressive, especially at
this stage: <http://microcosm-cc.github.io/>.

I have my own pet project at <http://pony-forum.com>, but it’s more of a hobby
project at the moment. But I think it’s also too early for non-technical users
to use the CMSes listed in the article; they’re more like alpha or beta
versions at this point.

------
aswanson
The number one problem with most forums, imo, hn included, is the lack of a
decent notification mechanism. In order to drive engagement, users need to
know what is being responded to.

------
staltz
Another one to add to that list: Iroquote (<http://www.iroquote.com>), by
yours truly.

Two really new things in our forum software: communities are democratic (no
admin "owners") and discussions are summarized (no 20-page comments to read
through). We're going to launch public next week and that means anyone will be
able to host free feature-full ad-less forums on our platform.

~~~
ippisl
Good luck!

Summation looks like a great idea.

------
Supermighty
Are there enough simple ruby hosts for Discourse to catch on? In the same way
that there were simple php hosts that helped PHPBB catch on.

~~~
kmfrk
Discourse sell dedicated server solutions, so I don't know how much of a
problem it is to them, though. Maybe it'll mean more people use their solution
instead of rolling their own.

Just from a cynical commercial point of view.

~~~
Supermighty
As long as they still offer the option to host your own I'm OK with that.

Self-hosted communities are an amazing life blood of the free and open
Internet.

------
mkoble11
I've been excited about discourse ever since it was announced.

If anyone knows how to build an infrastructure for online communities, it's
Jeff Atwood.

------
fakeer
Of all the forums I've tried (I am on many of those very famous forums; have
an account and/or have used it at some time or the other) I find MetaFilter
the best - minus the interface[1]. In terms of quality and atmosphere of the
forum.

Answers and participation is of high quality. It's hardly ever overwhelming.
Maybe because of relatively less number of (paying/one-time) users.

Doing away with threading somehow kills the flow of discussion and keeping it
makes it ugly and difficult to present, especially when they nest quite deep.

All the forums mentioned in the post just seem to be using different
templates(visual) for the same system and none of them is doing sth new that
is not already existing in other systems.

[1] It's just too ugly and unintuitive.

