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0 pointsjacoblyles13y ago0 comments

>"His point that stuck with me is that a major effect of threaded discussions is to improve the ability to bicker endlessly."

This is called "having a conversation". In flat discussions you can't bicker endlessly because a large portion of the posts are just replying to the OP. There isn't as much back-and-forth or progression of the discussion. Discussions tend to get only a few levels deep.

The only time anybody has changed my mind has been on nested forums, like this one. It is because we had to go back and forth three or four times to arrive at a new understanding. Nesting let us track that discussion.

Maybe it's a personality flaw, but I have had far fewer enlightening experiences on flat forums!

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wpietri13y ago

It is sometimes conversation, and that's great. It is much more often argument. And it is frequently pointless argument between two people who don't want to learn anything but instead are playing "king of the hill" with words.

For people who really want a conversation, I think a forum should support some way to privately contact one another. And a good ability to start new discussions. But for general-audience, broad-appeal forums, I think threads usually create more problems then they solve.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse