

Newer online forums are worse at conversation - thaumaturgy
http://robsheldon.com/conversations-online/

======
keiferski
I grew up on message boards. In fact, my first experiences with a computer
were with message boards.

If there's one thing that I dislike about nested comments, it's that they make
the community seem less cohesive. When everyone is commenting in a linear
fashion on (roughly) the same topics, it makes for a tighter community. Nested
comments, while better organized, just seem like a bunch of people having
separate conversations.

Message boards are like a group assembly. One person talks at a time, and
everyone listens. Nested comments are like a crowd of people having individual
conversations about the guy that just talked.

~~~
jokermatt999
I think that's a good thing, for larger communities. Threads become unreadable
once they're over a certain size, at least with linear comments. With nested
comments, you can digest part of a topic and still participate.

Also, I think the "fragmented community" also has its advantages. The
community can different aspects of the article at the same time, so parts
don't get ignored. While one person may want to mention they love the design
on the site, another has a minor nitpick, and a third guy has a comment on
similar articles, they can all say their piece without dragging the entire
discussion off topic.

However, I do agree with what you said about everyone being heard and the
benefit of a cohesive discussion. The recent topic this really comes to mind
for is the one about "How to stop HN's decline". There were a number of good
ideas, but they were also repeated numerously, and the same counter points
were made. If there was a single linear thread for that topic, while the size
would be unwieldy, I think the same points would have been made less.

~~~
keiferski
Perhaps the question then becomes: how do we make a large community function
like a small one?

One idea: for every new "comment" on a story (that isn't a response) create a
new instance of the story on the news feed. Example: I comment on this story,
and you reply.

    
    
      [Newer online forums are worse at conversation]
      "I grew up on message boards. In fact, my ..."     
      by keiferski | 2 comments
    

Rinse/repeat for every new comment on the story. It would lead to more
instances of the same story on the news feed, but would also lead to more in-
depth comments. Of course, it would be very easy to organize (and hide) long
lists of comments.

------
neutronicus
Myself, I think message boards resemble fencing more than upvote-based comment
threads. I kind of like that HN/Reddit mitigate the "quote piecemeal, attack
piecemeal" back and forth that was the norm on message boards.

(You know what I'm talking about, right? - person A writes long post, B takes
issue and responds to A sentence by sentence, often ignoring A's overall point
to focus on incorrect minutiae, A, now incensed, refuses to concede that any
of the minutiae were incorrect, and writes an individual response to each of
B's sentences. I felt that this wasn't a good environment for conversation
_either_ \- I think talking in person forces you to consider the thrust of
another person's argument, since you can't hold all the minutiae in RAM, but
my experience was that conversations in message boards degraded to many small
parallel quarrels over nitpicking in a way that HN/Reddit comment threads
don't (as much).)

------
kmfrk
The sites mentioned are _comment sites_ , who may or may not be subsumed under
the _forum_ category. Usually, "forum" signifies a _bulletin board_.

I think Rob Sheldon just needs to revise his semantics and find out how every
format has its advantages and disadvantages.

I, too, don't think comment sites are great for long discussions either. But
that's not "new". Try your luck at Something Awful or another niche forum.
Preferably one whose activity is so low that every thread doesn't advance with
100 posts every day.

~~~
hcho
A forum is a place where people come together and talk. The word comes from
ancient Romans. Many people still use it with its original meaning, no need to
nitpick.

------
Tycho
Well one problem is that some users have the power to _stop_ conversations
dead. I've had two perfectly good questions 'closed' on stackexchange
recently. They both had upvotes and answers already, contained patently useful
information, in fact one of them had even been edited by Jeff Atwood for
'improvement' - but 5 dorks voted to 'close' the threads because they seem to
view their moderation privileges as some sort of regex that MUST be applied,
regardless of the social cost. Newer online forums are worse at conversation
because they give power to people who are probably terrible
conversationalists.

On a related note, don't know if anyone's noticed this, but I remember people
using voice chat on the old XBox so much more than they do now. Not sure why
that is.

~~~
bxr
>I remember people using voice chat on the old XBox so much more than they do
now. Not sure why that is.

Its the kids and man-children who can't control themselves. Many of my friends
either don't use it, or only for group chat because of the prevalence of
assholes on live. I enjoy talking on live, I'm the kind of guy who will just
be yacking away in the middle of a firefight and even for me, once I encounter
an single rude young lady (or at least what sounds like one), I'm done and
just toss the headset on the floor. Its not worth it anymore.

~~~
Tycho
It can be such a fun, unique experience. One time as I joke I started singing
old rat-pack/crooner standards from the 50s, in the middle of a Halo match.
When I stopped, my teammates actually begged me to continue saying it sounded
really good and we were playing better while I sang. Literally nobody else has
ever complimented me on my vocal talent, lol. Many hilarious situations arise
that you could never get in other walks of life. But, yes, the obnoxious
players ruin it (yet, it was much worse in Halo 2 IMO, it just didn't stop
other people talking).

------
bonaldi
The best conversations online are those in spaces that model well to how we
converse as people: flat and linear in format. From the Well to Metafilter,
the best conversation happens on flat sites.

Nesting and threading and sorting all solve conversation problems that don't
really exist: we already know how to keep track of digressing conversations,
intuitively. In the physical world, we're exceptionally good at branching and
merging linear discussion threads, at weeding out noise from signal and at
setting community norms. The sites that thrive are those that allow users to
engage those skills, not those that try to turn it all into math.

In a lot of places, karma and scoring isn't really about making conversations
easier for the participants, it's about making editing easier or hands-off for
the moderators. Unfortunately, there's not really any way around the
fundamental need for community stewardship and moderation beyond a certain
size, and when you hit that size you find you have a site that you need to
moderate anyway, but it's one that also has user-hostile conversation display
and so it begins, inevitably, to suck.

~~~
lefstathiou
Not sure i agree with your "linear" point.

Conversations used to be linear in Groupie (forum app i created) and things
got completely out of control. Three people would try to have a conversation
and someone else would randomly throw in a totally unrelated point. Get a
dozen people doing this and all of sudden there's a mess. What happens is that
users stop trying to follow along and only read whats immediately in front of
them. Anecdotally, threading and nesting dramatically improved the experience
of forum-based communities and noticably improved the quality of replies.

Also, another benefit of scoring is that it lends to reputation. Just like in
real life, people do what they can to preserve their digital reputations (once
they establish them). Last week I saw something rather incredible: several of
my users dished out extremely harsh digital justice on one of the most popular
(by "fame") users who made some ridiculous statements. When you're among the
most influential on a platform, people watch and literally hold you to a
higher standard. Anyway just wanted to share this view.

~~~
thaumaturgy
> _When you're among the most influential on a platform, people watch and
> literally hold you to a higher standard._

Reddit's "celebrity users" have been grumbling publicly about exactly this
recently. They feel like they can no longer disagree or behave like other
users without being swarmed by people who recognize their username, and it's
making them a lot disgruntled. Generally, it's a bad sign when your power
users are unhappy, so I don't think that holding certain users to a higher
standard than other users is a good idea.

~~~
jokermatt999
If you dislike your status on a forum, it's easy enough to start a new
psuedonym, especially on reddit. I know kleinbl00 has complained about people
recognizing him across screennames, but then perhaps it's time for a new one,
or a change in writing style.

I think the benefits of a reputation outweigh its negatives though. It won't
keep the truly prolific users happy (karmanaut, PDub, kleinbl00, etc), but it
will motivate more people overall, I assume.

It is important to have an easy means of becoming anonymous for expressing
controversial opinions, however. Perhaps instead of Slashdot's "post as
anonymous" checkbox, there could be a "thread psuedonym" button when you want
to be anonymous, but hold a coherent discussion.

~~~
thaumaturgy
> _If you dislike your status on a forum, it's easy enough to start a new
> psuedonym, especially on reddit._

Since you mentioned him specifically, I'll mention that kleinbl00 has on
several occasions responded to this with varying degrees of, "that's not
fair", "I don't want to", "I don't think I should have to", etc. ... of
course, he usually puts it a little more colorfully.

> _I think the benefits of a reputation outweigh its negatives though._

kleinbl00 has actually put this as well as I could, so I should just let him
talk about it:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/gdig1/everyb...](http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/gdig1/everybody_wants_to_take_the_idols_down_a_notch/c1mw4bf)

What you're actually looking for, I think, is _accountability_ : some way for
bad behavior to have consequences. Unfortunately, in pseudo-anonymous
environments like Reddit (and HackerNews), developing a reputation through
score or activity or what-have-you can have downsides for the person with the
reputation, and you still don't get the accountability you want. It really is
the wrong solution to the wrong problem.

Likewise, you also say,

> _...but it will motivate more people overall, I assume._

...but in a field where we have relatively few experiments to study, this is
one experiment that has already been tried. Reddit already uses this, and the
only difference you really get in user behavior is that some of them choose to
switch to a new account every once in a while.

That might be a good game, but again, it's poor conversation.

------
kylemaxwell
I've thought about this before as well, particularly when I've administered or
moderated various forums (frequently related to MMORPGs, which might skew the
sample).

Scoring of threads/posts seems like a fairly intuitive solution to the
designer. But users / members frequently have a different agenda, which means
that the tools won't always work as intended depending on the community.

"Conversation by community" also seems like a feature, not a bug, from where I
sit. If enough different people self-organize into nano-parties (in a
political sense), then you've really fostered something interesting and
useful, or at least potentially so.

~~~
lefstathiou
Hey Kyle. I was wondering if you would be available to discuss your experience
managing various online forums with me (email or phone, whatever works). I
recently built a tool that has niche traction in the space and we are
considering a more direct step in that direction. I would appreciate speaking
with someone who manages these kinds of communities.

leo at groupie dot mobi

------
brandall10
I don't look at these comment sections on information rich sites to converse.

I look at them to see curated content that many times is more valuable than
the source material being discussed. On the best of them, I get to see what
incredibly smart and talented people think on the topic, I get to see their
mind work. The value of that cannot be overstated. The social niceties or
whatnot of 'conversations' dilute that information, as does removing social
feedback mechanisms that bring the most valuable comments to the forefront -
that stuff saves me time and energy.

Discussion forums are a different beast.

~~~
bonaldi
The original post is about forums, not comments, it's in the title. They're
the sites where the conversation is the focus. (And most of them have very
little truck with "niceties", don't make the nerd mistake of assuming a degree
of chatter isn't valuable or is dilution -- it's sync, feedback and flow-
control. Even SMTP says helo.)

That aside, bringing the most valuable comments to the front might save you
energy at a glance, but it also brings you comments limited by their hit-and-
run nature and costs you energy if you want to later return to a thread and
discover what's new, because there's none of the flow and context you need to
rejoin a discussion.

On the best forum sites, you get to _converse_ with the incredibly smart and
talented people. That's far more valuable than just looking at them in awe.

~~~
brandall10
He says forums, but his example is "places like Reddit and HackerNews and
Slashdot" - articles are the focus, he's talking about comments sections.

"Looking at them in awe?" What's wrong with lurking to learn?

~~~
thaumaturgy
You're right that I mixed up the terminology a bit, but as someone else here
pointed out, I was using "forum" in the classical sense: a place where people
talk.

We now have the "old kind" of forums -- phpBB and its ilk -- and the "new
kind" of forums, the comments-oriented sections of Reddit and HackerNews and
Slashdot.

And, yes, I get that on these sites, the comments are prompted by new
articles. (I'm not sure that I'd agree that articles are _the focus_ , but
that might depend on the individual.)

I was just pointing out where comments sites don't do as well _in terms of the
value of conversation_ , and why that might be, and comparing it to the older
style of forums.

Nothing wrong with lurking to learn; I think that "looking at them in awe" was
a bit of hyperbole.

------
joeyh
I think there's a reason most free software projects are still developed on
mailing lists. It's not just inertia, lists avoid many of these problems and
the problems they do have are well-understood by now and mostly easy to deal
with.

