Possible alternatives to comment threading
Danyl Strype
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No doubt the Loomio devs will hate me for saying this, but I think comment nesting in Loomio significantly breaks the UX. I'm guessing it was implemented to allow direct responses, but in practice, comment nesting seems to encourage web users to break a thread into many diverging subthreads, rather than start a new thread to explore a tangent. Just as we were doing in the thread this one has forked out of!
I have found comment nesting makes threads much larger, less focused, load more slowly, and harder to browser. Before anyone points out I can switch to chronological views, I have to do this per-thread, resulting in additional clicks and a bunch of waiting time while the JS hits the database and totally rebuilds the page. Besides, it doesn't solve any of the first three problems, and only partially solves the third.
I think the Loomio use case is more like Issues in GH than like blog comments or web forums. You'll notice GH have made a decision not implement comment nesting in Issues. I think the Discourse approach would work better for Loomio threads, where comments are only chronological, but anchor links are auto-added allowing users to click back and forth between replies and the comments they are replying to.
Another possible interface option goes back to conversations we had right at the beginning of Loomio dev about "forking" threads. The 'post' button could have two options:
* Post here: the comment appears as a new comment in chronological order, with a link back to the original and vice-versa, like Discourse as described above
* Post as a new thread ("fork"): the comment appears as the starting text of a new thread in the same group, with a link back to the comment it forked off, and vice-versa
This provides for a way to do brief, direct responses (eg "where is the film screening on Friday?", reply: "at Paramount Cinema") that is visually tied to the original, even after other comments have been added to the thread. But it prevents threads becoming confusing super-threads covering multiple topics. While only one decision can be made at a time per thread, super-threads de-emphasize the decision-making workflow that makes Loomio different from a web forum (like Discourse) or email list web archive (like GroupServer).
Danyl Strype Wed 19 Dec 2018 6:04AM
Just following up on a couple of things related to this:
@robertguthrie
We can make the default view a group setting if that's desired
Yes, it's definitely desired. Has it been implemented? I just started a new group, and I want to turn threading off, but I can't see an option to do that.
I'm going to make (chronological vs nested) a user
preference some time shortly. So it at least remembers what you like to see.
Has this been implemented? I'd love to be able set chronological as the default for all the Loomio groups I look at when I'm logged in.
Danyl Strype Thu 20 Dec 2018 4:41PM
BTW I just noticed the quote from @robertguthrie was about setting the default view that users looking at the group will see. That sounds good to have. But what I want is an option to turn threading off entirely for my group. Ideally, I'd like threading to be an opt-in feature, for reasons discussed in previous comments (encouraging side-discussions, off-topic tangents, super-threads etc).
Robert Guthrie Sun 22 Sep 2019 6:51AM
Linking this conversation back to the developments I'm writing about here: https://www.loomio.org/d/yFf7QjMX/thread-management-comment-nesting-direct-replies-forking-conversations/7
Connor · Thu 27 Sep 2018 12:50AM
Actually, it is!
But it doesn't need to be anecdotes, actually - this is digital technology, after all - we can always collect actual, solid, scientifically valid data on any usage patterns.
Anyway, I was not asking about the idea of getting rid of comment threading (which I would personally consider highly regressive and moot), though I think you were responding as if I was. I was asking about the idea that putting the text box at the bottom makes people read the whole thread above it (rather than merely scroll past it), an assumption you implied but didn't support with evidence. Again, it makes sense that it would do that, and it would certainly be nice, but that doesn't mean it works out that way in practice. Lazy people will be lazy :P