It's so much easier for linear threads to become a mess, since they're so volatile. There is simply no way to hold parallel coherent discussions within the same thread.
Most other linear forums seem to get by with no problems.
I understand you guys are still in the mindset of threaded comments promoting smaller side conversations in a thread, but the change to linear comments is - in part, at least - meant to encourage longer form discussions.
Some posting habits will need to change - people can quote multiple posts in one single post of their own, for example.
Blind Sniper said:
Threaded format encouraged multiple smaller/quicker conversations in one thread, whereas linear conversations encourag… moree a few, more longer form discussions that flow to different topics over time.
As far as my experience goes—which stems back to January 2016 with these forums—Reddit-style threads tend to have direct posts that closely relate to the topic and ideas in the original post, and the replies to these direct posts are the ones that diverge into semi-related topics and such.
It's so much easier for linear threads to become a mess, since they're so volatile. There is simply no way to hold parallel coherent discussions within the same thread.
Blind Sniper said:
I don't see how linear comments discourage people from speaking out about negative feedback.
Because it's such a mess. It's impossible to have a consistent talk about anything because all lines of discussion are cutting another off at every moment. This, too, applies to the topic of negative feedback.
Linear threads are a way to cut down on discussions and complaint threads pure and simple...it is why they are so popular with companies bec… moreause it is hard for the customers to come together and discuss the issues that are wrong in a product.
A small handful of the old forum regulars speculated the same thing in the Fall 2013 update when the Reddit comments were introduced. It's funny how that comes up on both sides of the argument.
I don't see how linear comments discourage people from speaking out about negative feedback. If anything, linear discussions promote longer form discussion where replies to other comments do not get lost on previous pages of threaded posts.
Because it's such a mess. It's impossible to have a consistent talk about anything because all lines of discussion are cutting another off at every moment. This, too, applies to the topic of negative feedback.
If you will pardon my umpteenth "I'm being a broken record, but..." joke - discussion format will change over time. You guys are (very reasonably) used to threaded comments after five years of it, but I'm telling you that other linear forums get by completely fine. Once discussions are made that are based around the linear format, people will adapt.
The change to linear comments means that discussion will be more focused on a smaller amount of topics at once, with longer and more qualitative posts. It's still possible to have multiple conversations, nevertheless. I do agree the (current) lack of a direct quote function isn't helping but that can be fixed by the web team.
Blind Sniper said:
If you will pardon my umpteenth "I'm being a broken record, but..." joke (…)
I hope you're right, Blind. That's all I have to say,
Something positive I've noticed of the update is live notifications. Now you can know when users reply to your posts without needing to refresh the webpage.
Because it's such a mess. It's impossible to have a consistent talk about anything because all lines of discussion are cutting another off a… moret every moment. This, too, applies to the topic of negative feedback.
If you will pardon my umpteenth "I'm being a broken record, but..." joke - discussion format will change over time. You guys are (very reasonably) used to threaded comments after five years of it, but I'm telling you that other linear forums get by completely fine. Once discussions are made that are based around the linear format, people will adapt.
The change to linear comments means that discussion will be more focused on a smaller amount of topics at once, with longer and more qualitative posts. It's still possible to have multiple conversations, nevertheless. I do agree the (current) lack of a direct quote function isn't helping but that can be fixed by the web team.
Even if people eventually change their posting habits, it doesn't solve the problem of older threads looking like a complete mess. Try reading the TWD details thread or questions thread for example and good luck if you can figure out what's going on. I hope the web team can apply a fix for older threads.
it doesn't solve the problem of older threads looking like a complete mess
Don't know if they can. When they switched to nested style, the old linear threads were a mess as well. They started all new megathreads(well, we only had one at the time) to solve it.
Even if people eventually change their posting habits, it doesn't solve the problem of older threads looking like a complete mess. Try readi… moreng the TWD details thread or questions thread for example and good luck if you can figure out what's going on. I hope the web team can apply a fix for older threads.
Is there a way to delete drafts? I decided not to post something and now it keeps coming up every time I load the page. This time I went and tried editing it to see if that gets rid of it. And no, I wasn't about to yell at anybody
Okay, that worked. Good to know. Weird how it happened though. If it was the last thing I had written, I'd get that, but it was a post from 4 posts ago that kept popping up. Either I had to hit "edit" or I had to wait for another auto-save to pop up(probably the latter).
Riddle me this.
Who the fuck asked for a change of this community in 2016? Everything in this site was going so well before, there was nothing wrong about it.
I do agree the (current) lack of a direct quote function isn't helping but that can be fixed by the web team.
Even then It is still ineffective. Before, if I saw a post in reply to another post (right under it and to the right) I automatically knew the post was a reply so I didn't need to reread the original.
But now with this linear style, I need to reread every single quote to understand the original post and what the person is replying to, so everything becomes a jumbled mess of scrolling back and rereading shit I already read.
Imagine a ton of people standing in a line all having a ton of different conversations at once all in the same room, just yelling things out. No one is looking at each other so you have no idea who is talking to who, and in order to join a random conversation that you think sounds vaguely interesting, you need to ask the person "hey who were you talking to? and who were they talking to...? And what were they talking about at first...?" Which takes fucking forever because things get lost.
If everyone was all with their designed partners talking to each other, all organized, you'd understand the conversations that are happening and each person's stance on everything.
Imagine a ton of people standing in a line all having a ton of different conversations at once all in the same room, just yelling things out. No one is looking at each other so you have no idea who is talking to who, and in order to join a random conversation that you think sounds vaguely interesting, you need to ask the person "hey who were you talking to? and who were they talking to...? And what were they talking about at first...?" Which takes fucking forever because things get lost.
Most other forums have this same layout, and even social media sites/chat rooms such as Discord/Skype have this layout too. The forum culture becomes molded around whichever discussion format the forums are set up around.
With every update, the forum was becoming more and more broken. The Vanilla forum software was not intended for nested comments to begin with(certain features became flat out broken, like editing topics). This new format also gives the moderators more freedom and choices to do the job they are volunteering for.
Riddle me this.
Who the fuck asked for a change of this community in 2016? Everything in this site was going so well before, there was nothing wrong about it.
Imagine a ton of people standing in a line all having a ton of different conversations at once all in the same room, just yelling things out… more. No one is looking at each other so you have no idea who is talking to who, and in order to join a random conversation that you think sounds vaguely interesting, you need to ask the person "hey who were you talking to? and who were they talking to...? And what were they talking about at first...?" Which takes fucking forever because things get lost.
Most other forums have this same layout, and even social media sites/chat rooms such as Discord/Skype have this layout too. The forum culture becomes molded around whichever discussion format the forums are set up around.
...and likewise, you also don't have to refresh to get notifications of new comments:
BetterToSleep said:
Something positive I've noticed of the update is live notifications. Now you can know when users reply to your posts without needing to refresh the webpage.
Discord is a fast-paced platform majorly used for instant conversations. Forums, on the other hand, are slower, and for good reason; you have discussions on forums.
Who asked for a change of this community in 2016
With every update, the forum was becoming more and more broken. The Vanilla forum … moresoftware was not intended for nested comments to begin with(certain features became flat out broken, like editing topics). This new format also gives the moderators more freedom and choices to do the job they are volunteering for.
This as well.
Discord is a fast-paced platform majorly used for instant conversations. Forums, on the other hand, are slower, and for good reason; you have discussions on forums.
I never encountered any problems in the old layout.
Aside from all the forum features (both for users and mods) that had to be disabled to accommodate threaded discussions, lots of problems were brought up in other aspects of the forum, such as trolls abusing profile feeds. Plus, the mod tools in the threaded version of the forums were not as robust as they are now.
As I said earlier, us having better mod tools is a benefit for you guys too. It allows us to better moderate and curate good discussions.
Blind Sniper said:
Yes, and the linear comments help promote longer, more thought out posts. Threaded comments previously promoted shorter, quicker discussions.
Linear threads are more similar to Discord and other chatting platforms than Reddit-style threads are. That makes me say it's the other way around.
Forums, on the other hand, are slower, and for good reason; you have discussions on forums.
Yes, and the linear comments help promote longer, more thought out posts. Threaded comments previously promoted shorter, quicker discussions.
Would it be possible to set quote the reply to default? Sorry if this has been covered, I haven't read the whole thread. Additionally, I've been on other linear forums where if person A posts, person B replies to A, person C replies to B and person D replies to C; the entire conversation is posted as quoted in Person Ds post.
The link below is an example of what I mean.
Person A is blue
Person B is red
Person C is green
Person D is purple
Imagine a ton of people standing in a line all having a ton of different conversations at once all in the same room, just yelling things out… more. No one is looking at each other so you have no idea who is talking to who, and in order to join a random conversation that you think sounds vaguely interesting, you need to ask the person "hey who were you talking to? and who were they talking to...? And what were they talking about at first...?" Which takes fucking forever because things get lost.
Most other forums have this same layout, and even social media sites/chat rooms such as Discord/Skype have this layout too. The forum culture becomes molded around whichever discussion format the forums are set up around.
Linear threads are more similar to Discord and other chatting platforms than Reddit-style threads are. That makes me say it's the other way around.
The point I was fixating on was that other forums/Discord/Skype are linear, as is this forum.
Your point that Discord and the threaded comments both promoted shorter, chat room style discussion is correct, but not the point I was fixating on.
I was saying that, yes - forums promote slower, more focused discussion. The transition from threaded to linear comments helps this.
Yes, and the linear comments help promote longer, more thought out posts. Threaded comments previously promoted shorter, quicker discussions.
Of all my times on the forums I have seen more than plenty massive threaded posts with massive discussions that were well thought out and well written, and easy to follow because they were threaded. (I have seen more in the past, though, because lately there is nothing even worth talking about.) Long and well written posts are harder to follow on linear style websites.
Forums, on the other hand, are slower, and for good reason; you have discussions on forums.
Yes, and the linear comments help promote longer, more thought out posts. Threaded comments previously promoted shorter, quicker discussions.
BitterSteel826218 said:
Additionally, I've been on other linear forums where if person A posts, person B replies to A, person C replies to B and person D replies to C; the entire conversation is posted as quoted in Person Ds post.
That would clutter the thread to a point where many would find it annoying—and yet, funnily enough, it's the only way to successfully have parallel on-going discussions within the same linear thread. What to do?
Also can we take a second to notice that that basically looks like a string queue in itself, just with more intendation at the top instead of at the base?
Would it be possible to set quote the reply to default? Sorry if this has been covered, I haven't read the whole thread. Additionally, I've … morebeen on other linear forums where if person A posts, person B replies to A, person C replies to B and person D replies to C; the entire conversation is posted as quoted in Person Ds post.
The link below is an example of what I mean.
Person A is blue
Person B is red
Person C is green
Person D is purple
https://imgur.com/a/Ymjlf
and even social media sites/chat rooms such as Discord/Skype have this layout too
Those are discord and skype, this is a forum. Discord and skype are chat rooms meant to go fast and not for long discussions, and meant for people who are to sit at their screen for longer periods of time to be able to reply immediately. Forums are the opposite. They're slower and have longer discussions, you should not need to be here all the time. Lots of people like to check in, leave a comment, and then come on later in the day to see if they got a reply and to leave a new one. But what happens? Their latest reply gets buried pages back.
So now, a simple conversation that is supposed to last maybe 5 different comments is now stretched over 12 different pages (depending on the thread's activity level), scattered all over the place. If I want to look over that entire discussion? I need to load multiple pages to see every page the conversation took place on. All this hassle and shit needed to be done just to see a simple conversation.
Linear is not meant for a slow forum, it's meant for chatrooms.
If discussions are slower, posts being buried "12 pages back" "in one day" won't be a problem, though.
Linear is not meant for a slow forum, it's meant for chatrooms.
Just about every forum out there uses linear, and those forums get by swimmingly with longer form discussions; I think you came to that conclusion just to have a contrarian view to how I compared linear forums to chatrooms, social media, etc.
Blind Sniper said:
Your point that Discord and the threaded comments both promoted shorter, chat room style discussion is correct, but not the point I was fixating on.
I never said that though. I was saying that linear threads promote shorter fast-paced discussions, like Discord and others do, and that threaded threads—aka Reddit-style threads aka string threads—promote slower, more reflective discussions.
I was saying that, yes - forums promote slower, more focused discussion. The transition from threaded to linear comments helps this.
Again, I digress. The reason why I despise discussing anything remotely reflective on Discord with plenty of people is precisely because it is too linear and too fast-paced for anyone to take the time to digest what is being said.
I use the forum for that.
Now, I feel like the forum is one step closer to being as ineffective at holding discussions as Discord is.
Edited section
Dont_Look_Back said:
Linear is not meant for a slow forum, it's meant for chatrooms.
Discussions will not suddenly become slower just because the format was changed. There are still relatively the same amount of people on the forum as there were the other day, still commenting as much as they please, still burying everything, causing scattering. This is only beneficial for chatrooms with people who are at their computers for longer periods of time to be able to see everything, so they have no need to go back. Let me mention that most chatrooms like discord and skype also had an app (which worked great) so "keeping up" with the linear discussion was easy. On the other hand, this forums needs every ounce of wifi it can get to load the website and glitches out half the time. I cant get on throughout the day if I'm not on my computer, I need to wait till I get home after a 12 hour day of school + work. By then things are buried and I'm sure this is the same for many others.
Even if it may not be 12 pages back, things are still scattered nonetheless, which makes everything tedious especially because most of this forum is not here all the time to see everything. I can assure you most of the forum is going to end up going back multiple times and loading multiple pages just to read one conversation, when before the update it took maybe 5 minutes to read that same conversation in only one tab + 1 small scroll.
They're slower and have longer discussions,
If discussions are slower, posts being buried "12 pages back" "in one day" won't be a pr… moreoblem, though.
Linear is not meant for a slow forum, it's meant for chatrooms.
Just about every forum out there uses linear, and those forums get by swimmingly with longer form discussions; I think you came to that conclusion just to have a contrarian view to how I compared linear forums to chatrooms, social media, etc.
Dont_Look_Back said:
(…) On the other hand, this forums needs every ounce of wifi it can get to load the website and glitches out half the time. (…)
While we are on this topic, bear in mind that users relying on limited mobile data plans have to jump between thread pages like crazy to be able to read a discussion.
Discussions will not suddenly become slower just because the format was changed. There are still relatively the same amount of people on th… moree forum as there were the other day, still commenting as much as they please, still burying everything, causing scattering. This is only beneficial for chatrooms with people who are at their computers for longer periods of time to be able to see everything, so they have no need to go back. Let me mention that most chatrooms like discord and skype also had an app (which worked great) so "keeping up" with the linear discussion was easy. On the other hand, this forums needs every ounce of wifi it can get to load the website and glitches out half the time. I cant get on throughout the day if I'm not on my computer, I need to wait till I get home after a 12 hour day of school + work. By then things are buried and I'm sure this is the same for many others.
Even if it may not be 12 pages back, things a… [view original content]
Yes, and the linear comments help promote longer, more thought out posts. Threaded comments previously promoted shorter, quicker discussions.
I honestly have no idea where you get this thesis from.
The threaded style obviously makes discussion not only more varied, but more focused and organized. There's never going to be just one thing to talk about in a certain topic/thread. There are always going to be a lot of different ideas, topics and arguments. You had that all organized with threaded, whereas with this you're just going to have everything stepping over everything and be forced to go back and forth, breaking "discussion immersion" so to say.
So what you're proposing when you say the solution is to start making threads around this linear style is really saying were going to have to start discussing things in an extremely general and non-specific way so that there is no diversion to more specific sides of the topic which would cause discussion overlaying? I'd say that's (extremely) lowering the quality of discussion, no?
Yes, and the linear comments help promote longer, more thought out posts. Threaded comments previously promoted shorter, quicker discussions… more.
I honestly have no idea where you get this thesis from.
The threaded style obviously makes discussion not only more varied, but more focused and organized. There's never going to be just one thing to talk about in a certain topic/thread. There are always going to be a lot of different ideas, topics and arguments. You had that all organized with threaded, whereas with this you're just going to have everything stepping over everything and be forced to go back and forth, breaking "discussion immersion" so to say.
So what you're proposing when you say the solution is to start making threads around this linear style is really saying were going to have to start discussing things in an extremely general and non-specific way so that there is no diversion to more specific sides of the topic which w… [view original content]
Lol this makes me wonder. They originally had linear way back when, and then moved to threaded. When these "people who were also upset about the forum being threaded" were complaining, I wonder what was told to them in order to "persuade" them that, at the time, threaded was better.
Yes, and the linear comments help promote longer, more thought out posts. Threaded comments previously promoted shorter, quicker discussions… more.
I honestly have no idea where you get this thesis from.
The threaded style obviously makes discussion not only more varied, but more focused and organized. There's never going to be just one thing to talk about in a certain topic/thread. There are always going to be a lot of different ideas, topics and arguments. You had that all organized with threaded, whereas with this you're just going to have everything stepping over everything and be forced to go back and forth, breaking "discussion immersion" so to say.
So what you're proposing when you say the solution is to start making threads around this linear style is really saying were going to have to start discussing things in an extremely general and non-specific way so that there is no diversion to more specific sides of the topic which w… [view original content]
bear in mind that users relying on limited mobile data plans have to jump between thread pages like crazy to be able to read a discussion.
Also bear in mind that linear comments consistently load X amount of comments a page, whereas threaded comments would load entire threaded conversations, many of which were much longer than the amount of comments on a linear page.
Dont_Look_Back said:
(…) On the other hand, this forums needs every ounce of wifi it can get to load the website and glitches out half th… moree time. (…)
While we are on this topic, bear in mind that users relying on limited mobile data plans have to jump between thread pages like crazy to be able to read a discussion.
Comments
Most other linear forums seem to get by with no problems.
I understand you guys are still in the mindset of threaded comments promoting smaller side conversations in a thread, but the change to linear comments is - in part, at least - meant to encourage longer form discussions.
Some posting habits will need to change - people can quote multiple posts in one single post of their own, for example.
Because it's such a mess. It's impossible to have a consistent talk about anything because all lines of discussion are cutting another off at every moment. This, too, applies to the topic of negative feedback.
If you will pardon my umpteenth "I'm being a broken record, but..." joke - discussion format will change over time. You guys are (very reasonably) used to threaded comments after five years of it, but I'm telling you that other linear forums get by completely fine. Once discussions are made that are based around the linear format, people will adapt.
The change to linear comments means that discussion will be more focused on a smaller amount of topics at once, with longer and more qualitative posts. It's still possible to have multiple conversations, nevertheless. I do agree the (current) lack of a direct quote function isn't helping but that can be fixed by the web team.
"you’ve likely heard me say weirder shit before"
Wasn't weird, it was ignorant.
I hope you're right, Blind. That's all I have to say,
Something positive I've noticed of the update is live notifications. Now you can know when users reply to your posts without needing to refresh the webpage.
Even if people eventually change their posting habits, it doesn't solve the problem of older threads looking like a complete mess. Try reading the TWD details thread or questions thread for example and good luck if you can figure out what's going on. I hope the web team can apply a fix for older threads.
“I’m going to disregard everything you say”
Yeah...obviously.
Don't know if they can. When they switched to nested style, the old linear threads were a mess as well. They started all new megathreads(well, we only had one at the time) to solve it.
Is there a way to delete drafts? I decided not to post something and now it keeps coming up every time I load the page. This time I went and tried editing it to see if that gets rid of it. And no, I wasn't about to yell at anybody
Okay, that worked. Good to know. Weird how it happened though. If it was the last thing I had written, I'd get that, but it was a post from 4 posts ago that kept popping up. Either I had to hit "edit" or I had to wait for another auto-save to pop up(probably the latter).
The linear threads are still bullshit. I want the old layout back. Nobody asked for this change.
Disregard it as being important
As I mentioned before.
Please, for the love of god, this!
Riddle me this.
Who the fuck asked for a change of this community in 2016? Everything in this site was going so well before, there was nothing wrong about it.
Even then It is still ineffective. Before, if I saw a post in reply to another post (right under it and to the right) I automatically knew the post was a reply so I didn't need to reread the original.
But now with this linear style, I need to reread every single quote to understand the original post and what the person is replying to, so everything becomes a jumbled mess of scrolling back and rereading shit I already read.
Imagine a ton of people standing in a line all having a ton of different conversations at once all in the same room, just yelling things out. No one is looking at each other so you have no idea who is talking to who, and in order to join a random conversation that you think sounds vaguely interesting, you need to ask the person "hey who were you talking to? and who were they talking to...? And what were they talking about at first...?" Which takes fucking forever because things get lost.
If everyone was all with their designed partners talking to each other, all organized, you'd understand the conversations that are happening and each person's stance on everything.
Most other forums have this same layout, and even social media sites/chat rooms such as Discord/Skype have this layout too. The forum culture becomes molded around whichever discussion format the forums are set up around.
With every update, the forum was becoming more and more broken. The Vanilla forum software was not intended for nested comments to begin with(certain features became flat out broken, like editing topics). This new format also gives the moderators more freedom and choices to do the job they are volunteering for.
People don't use the forum and Discord with the same purpose though.
Don't compare this with discord. In discord, you don't have to reload the page just to see new comments, it's a live feed.
...and likewise, you also don't have to refresh to get notifications of new comments:
This as well.
Discord is a fast-paced platform majorly used for instant conversations. Forums, on the other hand, are slower, and for good reason; you have discussions on forums.
I never encountered any problems in the old layout.
Yes, and the linear comments help promote longer, more thought out posts. Threaded comments previously promoted shorter, quicker discussions.
Aside from all the forum features (both for users and mods) that had to be disabled to accommodate threaded discussions, lots of problems were brought up in other aspects of the forum, such as trolls abusing profile feeds. Plus, the mod tools in the threaded version of the forums were not as robust as they are now.
As I said earlier, us having better mod tools is a benefit for you guys too. It allows us to better moderate and curate good discussions.
Linear threads are more similar to Discord and other chatting platforms than Reddit-style threads are. That makes me say it's the other way around.
Would it be possible to set quote the reply to default? Sorry if this has been covered, I haven't read the whole thread. Additionally, I've been on other linear forums where if person A posts, person B replies to A, person C replies to B and person D replies to C; the entire conversation is posted as quoted in Person Ds post.
The link below is an example of what I mean.
Person A is blue
Person B is red
Person C is green
Person D is purple
https://imgur.com/a/Ymjlf
Yeah, which is why myself and so many others don't use those and used this one.
The point I was fixating on was that other forums/Discord/Skype are linear, as is this forum.
Your point that Discord and the threaded comments both promoted shorter, chat room style discussion is correct, but not the point I was fixating on.
I was saying that, yes - forums promote slower, more focused discussion. The transition from threaded to linear comments helps this.
It was the same for me, some others who’ve commented on this thread, and people I’ve talked to personally.
Of all my times on the forums I have seen more than plenty massive threaded posts with massive discussions that were well thought out and well written, and easy to follow because they were threaded. (I have seen more in the past, though, because lately there is nothing even worth talking about.) Long and well written posts are harder to follow on linear style websites.
That would clutter the thread to a point where many would find it annoying—and yet, funnily enough, it's the only way to successfully have parallel on-going discussions within the same linear thread. What to do?
Also can we take a second to notice that that basically looks like a string queue in itself, just with more intendation at the top instead of at the base?
Those are discord and skype, this is a forum. Discord and skype are chat rooms meant to go fast and not for long discussions, and meant for people who are to sit at their screen for longer periods of time to be able to reply immediately. Forums are the opposite. They're slower and have longer discussions, you should not need to be here all the time. Lots of people like to check in, leave a comment, and then come on later in the day to see if they got a reply and to leave a new one. But what happens? Their latest reply gets buried pages back.
So now, a simple conversation that is supposed to last maybe 5 different comments is now stretched over 12 different pages (depending on the thread's activity level), scattered all over the place. If I want to look over that entire discussion? I need to load multiple pages to see every page the conversation took place on. All this hassle and shit needed to be done just to see a simple conversation.
Linear is not meant for a slow forum, it's meant for chatrooms.
If discussions are slower, posts being buried "12 pages back" "in one day" won't be a problem, though.
Just about every forum out there uses linear, and those forums get by swimmingly with longer form discussions; I think you came to that conclusion just to have a contrarian view to how I compared linear forums to chatrooms, social media, etc.
I never said that though. I was saying that linear threads promote shorter fast-paced discussions, like Discord and others do, and that threaded threads—aka Reddit-style threads aka string threads—promote slower, more reflective discussions.
Again, I digress. The reason why I despise discussing anything remotely reflective on Discord with plenty of people is precisely because it is too linear and too fast-paced for anyone to take the time to digest what is being said.
I use the forum for that.
Now, I feel like the forum is one step closer to being as ineffective at holding discussions as Discord is.
Edited section
I need to find a way to emphasize this.
Discussions will not suddenly become slower just because the format was changed. There are still relatively the same amount of people on the forum as there were the other day, still commenting as much as they please, still burying everything, causing scattering. This is only beneficial for chatrooms with people who are at their computers for longer periods of time to be able to see everything, so they have no need to go back. Let me mention that most chatrooms like discord and skype also had an app (which worked great) so "keeping up" with the linear discussion was easy. On the other hand, this forums needs every ounce of wifi it can get to load the website and glitches out half the time. I cant get on throughout the day if I'm not on my computer, I need to wait till I get home after a 12 hour day of school + work. By then things are buried and I'm sure this is the same for many others.
Even if it may not be 12 pages back, things are still scattered nonetheless, which makes everything tedious especially because most of this forum is not here all the time to see everything. I can assure you most of the forum is going to end up going back multiple times and loading multiple pages just to read one conversation, when before the update it took maybe 5 minutes to read that same conversation in only one tab + 1 small scroll.
While we are on this topic, bear in mind that users relying on limited mobile data plans have to jump between thread pages like crazy to be able to read a discussion.
I honestly have no idea where you get this thesis from.
The threaded style obviously makes discussion not only more varied, but more focused and organized. There's never going to be just one thing to talk about in a certain topic/thread. There are always going to be a lot of different ideas, topics and arguments. You had that all organized with threaded, whereas with this you're just going to have everything stepping over everything and be forced to go back and forth, breaking "discussion immersion" so to say.
So what you're proposing when you say the solution is to start making threads around this linear style is really saying were going to have to start discussing things in an extremely general and non-specific way so that there is no diversion to more specific sides of the topic which would cause discussion overlaying? I'd say that's (extremely) lowering the quality of discussion, no?
Preach!
Lol this makes me wonder. They originally had linear way back when, and then moved to threaded. When these "people who were also upset about the forum being threaded" were complaining, I wonder what was told to them in order to "persuade" them that, at the time, threaded was better.
Also bear in mind that linear comments consistently load X amount of comments a page, whereas threaded comments would load entire threaded conversations, many of which were much longer than the amount of comments on a linear page.