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Subject: Two-level discussion nesting/threading (sub topics)

The current structure of topics has one undeniable problem: the main point often gets mixed up amongst the arguments being made for a topic related to it. For instance, there's currently a topic in this forum asking which faction you have chosen. Now, if I wanted to bring up the question of how it's known these things are actually factions (as Count Blinkula did at the bottom of the first page and several others did throughout the topic), I start derailing the topic and mixing this new (but related) discussion with the intended one, which can make both points difficult to follow because they're intertwined in the same space.

I'm sure some of you are probably familiar with this structure of topic/post organisation where the new posts added to an existing topic can quickly be accessed, but more importantly, can be renamed to start a "sub topic" of the original one.

What I propose is to have the inside of a topic retain a similar chronological structure to how it currently does, but allow members to "fork off" (LOL) a related discussion with a new title, but still have it attached to the original one, effectively keeping discussion in the sub topic separate from the main one. If you think about it in terms of a tree where the main topic is the trunk of the tree and sub topics are its branches, it might make a little bit more sense. Though I'm unsure if I like the idea of a "branching branch" yet - one level deep would be good.

Additionally, users could also be presented with a list of sub-topics upon entering a thread, from the forum page, and an option to bring up the sub topic from the point in the main topic where it was forked. This could also be useful for minimising repeat posts since you could jump straight to an established sub topic.

As far as moderation is concerned, a number of things could happen. Moderators could:

- Lock a sub-topic (as opposed to locking the entire thread as they currently have to)
- Lock the main thread and any sub-topics
- Add a sub-topic
- Remove a sub-topic (not actually delete, but remove the sub-topic and migrate the posts within it back to the main topic)
- Rename a sub-topic
- Merge sub-topics
etc...

What do you think?

  • 07.23.2012 2:33 AM PDT

Looking for clan that isn't too serious? Then join the ODST 501st Airborne Battalion. Go to http://www.501st.forumclan.com for more info.

As you said, going one level deep would be good. But if we had multiple levels of sub-topics, one is bound to be unrelated to the original topic. Also, too many sub-topics might make it hard to navigate. None the less, a good suggestion.

  • 07.23.2012 2:56 AM PDT
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  • Fabled Legendary Member

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Eh, I don't know...
Kinda sounds like the kind of thing the forums are already used for.

  • 07.23.2012 2:56 AM PDT

cars, girls & cake all day everyday

Hmm.

You could click a hyperlink or button that would unfold all of the replies to a specific post, posts that would otherwise remain hidden. Something like a threaded view within a linear view...or you could customize whether to see threads in linear view or fully unfolded threaded view, and you'd see replies to posts accordingly.

Thing is I never liked threaded view much, namely on places like HBO because you'd have to click the replies to see them (and it's stupid confusing at first glance) maybe we could make this option seperate from plain old linear view? Options are good.

  • 07.23.2012 2:59 AM PDT

Jazzer008

Sounds awesome to me.

  • 07.23.2012 3:05 AM PDT

“Oh, it’s a little bit of everything, it’s the mountains, it’s the fog, it’s the news at six o’clock, it’s the death of my first dog, it’s the angels up above me, it’s the song that they don’t sing, It’s a little bit of everything.”
- Dawes, A little bit of everything

I like that kind of structure, however I have one petty concern--it does not look appealing.

I have not seen that kind of structure utilized in a way that was pleasing to the eyes. I really like how the forums here look, but in threads that have numerous long replies and a broad topic, it can get quite cluttered quite quick.

If this system could be utilized in such a way that it kept the visual theme that we've come to enjoy, I would be all for it. While that does go against what I believe is one of the principles of design (form/function), it is still something I'd want.

  • 07.23.2012 3:50 AM PDT
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From a user's standpoint, it seems like that idea could be nice. However I picture it making a lot of more extra work for the moderators.

  • 07.23.2012 4:43 AM PDT

Sounds complicated.

  • 07.23.2012 4:49 AM PDT

(^}>

Speaking as a user who frequents the Flood, I can't imagine a lot of the people there have enough brain power to understand that kind of structure.

  • 07.23.2012 4:50 AM PDT
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Twitter.
WyIdfyre: 'lol, who the hell would even wear those?'
AuSam: 'lol, who the hell would even have sex with dogs?'

-K-

I could see it corrupting the natural flow of discussion here so to speak. However complex the discussion can appear to be, reading through a thread from the beginning or just your last reference will generally bring out what is going on.
With this, I think people would find it harder to break into an ongoing discussion, because they don't know which part of the topic they're looking for. Forgive me if that makes less sense than I intended it to.
It just feels like an over complication of a functioning system. I'm quite happy watching smaller ideas flourish within a thread, but still pertaining to the main topic, but with this do you not think it would be harder for the ideas to take root, if people looking to break in have to search for the sub topic?
And how do you know when to create a sub topic? Where is the line between the original topic, a sub topic and a new thread?
Finally, how close to the original topic does a sub topic have to be? What if, for example, something like the thread about the community voting for a moderator occurs, only the off-topic discussion in that holds a sub topic in a completely unrelated thread?
I don't know, I don't know if I'm making sense anymore.

It's a nice idea in theory, but I don't think it's one that could be applied to this site's community.

  • 07.23.2012 5:00 AM PDT

“Oh, it’s a little bit of everything, it’s the mountains, it’s the fog, it’s the news at six o’clock, it’s the death of my first dog, it’s the angels up above me, it’s the song that they don’t sing, It’s a little bit of everything.”
- Dawes, A little bit of everything

Kalriq brings up several good points. I can see this feature being confusing for someone who enters, say, a twelve page thread with several subtopics, that would be quite confusing.

I was about to suggest a slight change regarding rules against going off topic, but I started to realize that the rules aren't an issue here. The problem seems to be confusion. The confusion stems from how we quote, as often I (and many others) will simply quote an entire post and then reply. If we, collectively, took more time posting and quoting, we might be able to make threads a lot more legible simply by singling out the specific parts of a discussion we're replying to.

But that wouldn't fix it and we would still have problems with subtopics within a thread. Now, I had not thought too much about this before, but I had often just considered what we're calling subtopics to be somewhat related, albeit off topic, comments. I would recommend creating a new thread to handle subtopics, but sometimes that just isn't practical for many situations. If we take, for example, the discussion about cheating on polls from the voting for moderators thread in this forum, there seem to be two kinds of discussion; 1) discussing the possibility of having the community vote for moderators, which lead to discussion 2) rigging votes via polls (in regards to a Mail Sack contest).

They are both valid discussions, and very closely related as the cheating was brought up as evidence to support a stance on the original topic. The thread seemed to trend towards discussing the cheating with no real benefit to the original topic other than trying to prove a member or two wrong. This kind of situation, if formatted under the design mentioned in the first post of this thread, would be very easy to deal with. The people who did not want to be involved in the discussion around cheating could collapse the tree of replies and continue reading.

So through all my rambling here, I think I have realized that this system would be very confusing if there were a lot of subtopics, but if there were only a few it would be easy to manage. Looking at this more, I cannot think of many threads that would have a large amount of subtopics, so I do not believe the proposed system would be confusing in the end.

It might take some adjustment, though.

Posted by: Alec9224
From a user's standpoint, it seems like that idea could be nice. However I picture it making a lot of more extra work for the moderators.
If implemented well, I would imagine that if a user found a particular subtopic in violation of the rules, they could simply report the entire subtopic. If, on the other hand, only a few posts were in violation of the rules (or off topic), a user could simply report them in the usual manner.

My point is that I think this system would actually make it easier for the moderators. They could lock entire subtopics within a thread that do not belong while keeping the original thread alive.

A question I have, though, is if a thread that is in violation of the rules creates a valid subtopic that is in compliance with the rules, what would happen? I imagine that the original thread could be locked, and that the valid subtopic could be moved around (magic) and made into a thread of it's own minus the original offending content.

I do not believe that any of this would be possible under the current system, but we should continue the discussion of what we would like to see here as it very well could be implemented later. (Here's to hoping)

[Edited on 07.23.2012 5:29 AM PDT]

  • 07.23.2012 5:23 AM PDT

Posted by: Count BlinkulaThat's kind of what I'm talking about, but a restructure of it. I'll explain below.

Posted by: KalriqThe problem is that threads are already being corrupted by other discussions (even if they are related). If you could add a sub topic for people to jump straight to for a related discussion, you leave the main topic free to pursue without all of that noise.

Posted by: Kalriq
And how do you know when to create a sub topic? Where is the line between the original topic, a sub topic and a new thread?
Finally, how close to the original topic does a sub topic have to be? What if, for example, something like the thread about the community voting for a moderator occurs, only the off-topic discussion in that holds a sub topic in a completely unrelated thread?
I would say whenever you think your post:

- Probably doesn't deserve its own thread (eg. maybe you're asking a related "open-and-shut" question)
- May derail or get in the way of an ongoing discussion about the main topic; or
- Is an important enough question to ask about the main topic but might not be directly related to it.

Just on the last point there, I trimmed off the last part of your post about this not being something that could be applied to this site's community. Well, what if the next post I created I could set as a sub topic to discuss with you why that might be.

Posted by: Kickimanjaro
But that wouldn't fix it and we would still have problems with subtopics within a thread. Now, I had not thought too much about this before, but I had often just considered what we're calling subtopics to be somewhat related, albeit off topic, comments. I would recommend creating a new thread to handle subtopics, but sometimes that just isn't practical for many situations. If we take, for example, the discussion about cheating on polls from the voting for moderators thread in this forum, there seem to be two kinds of discussion; 1) discussing the possibility of having the community vote for moderators, which lead to discussion 2) rigging votes via polls (in regards to a Mail Sack contest).

They are both valid discussions, and very closely related as the cheating was brought up as evidence to support a stance on the original topic. The thread seemed to trend towards discussing the cheating with no real benefit to the original topic other than trying to prove a member or two wrong. This kind of situation, if formatted under the design mentioned in the first post of this thread, would be very easy to deal with. The people who did not want to be involved in the discussion around cheating could collapse the tree of replies and continue reading.
That was another example I was going to use, but I think you may be getting the wrong idea about the tree structure.

Logically it would be structured like a tree with each sub topic being a branch of the trunk, but I would not want to see it implemented physically as a tree view (like the picture). What I'm envisioning is for there to be a list of sub topics within the main topic that you can jump straight to, which would be presented as a separate topic (ie. you would not see the posts in the main topic). Something like...

Subject: Here's the main topic

Sub topic A
Sub topic B
Sub topic C
[etc... (scrollable, order by last post, reply count, etc...)]


Main topic post 1Main topic post 2Main topic post 3
[etc...]


  • 07.23.2012 6:10 AM PDT

Check out my Soundcloud account to hear some of my music.
Here's my twitter, in the off-chance you want that too.

Community Joe Interview: defnop552
Bye.

I get the idea, and it's an interesting one; but it raises it raises the question, what would a sub-topic look like while retaining this thread design? Would you use the collapsable title style, or a new way altogether?

Edit after seeing the post above- So the subtopic is automatically added to the main post?

[Edited on 07.23.2012 6:14 AM PDT]

  • 07.23.2012 6:13 AM PDT

@spawn031

"So much of what we do is ephemeral and quickly forgotten, even by ourselves, so it's gratifying to have something you have done linger in people's memories." John Williams

So a visual representation of this could look somewhat like this thread.

I like the idea, but I'm not 100% for it. It just reminds me of a few other forum boards, mainly GAF where nearly every topic has an OT that contains all information relevant to it. But that isn't the case here, you're just taking a main idea and branching it off into different sections.

Sure it might be confusing to start out with for newer users etc, but does it really make everything more organized? I would like this mainly because it would stop all the repeat threads that constantly pop up. But as long as "cross discussion" doesn't happen, which you already pointed out a solution for that, I could see it useful. Still not 100% sure though.

  • 07.23.2012 6:15 AM PDT

Man of God. Fan of Bungie. Eater of many Jr. Bacon cheeseburgers.


Posted by: Kickimanjaro
I like that kind of structure, however I have one petty concern--it does not look appealing.

I have not seen that kind of structure utilized in a way that was pleasing to the eyes. I really like how the forums here look, but in threads that have numerous long replies and a broad topic, it can get quite cluttered quite quick.


I agree. However, I think there is a way to go about doing it where it doesn't clutter the screen too much. This would allow, I think, for more discussion. A lot of times I don't comment on a sub topic because it's so mixed in the primary that I feel like my input wouldn't even be noticed. This is a brilliant idea.

[Edited on 07.23.2012 6:21 AM PDT]

  • 07.23.2012 6:20 AM PDT

Posted by: defnop552
Edit after seeing the post above- So the subtopic is automatically added to the main post?
A link to it, yes, but the sub topic isn't physically within the main topic (ie. you probably shouldn't be able to find it by paging through). It's an entirely separate topic that is owned (referenced) by the main topic as a sub topic.

  • 07.23.2012 6:23 AM PDT

*´¨)---––•(-• Dutchy •-)•–--–-(¨´*
¸.•´¸.•*´¨) ¸.•*¨)••(¨*•.¸ (¨´*•.¸´•.¸
(¸.•´ (¸.•Everything fails•.¸) ´•.¸)

I think daz should just design everything for this website.

Would this post be a subtopic or would this be ignored and be considered a random statement that sparks no discussion?

[Edited on 07.23.2012 6:29 AM PDT]

  • 07.23.2012 6:27 AM PDT
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God, I hope this comes with the New Hawtness.

  • 07.23.2012 6:27 AM PDT

I personally detest threaded discussion topics.

I find it to be much more simple to follow a discussion in the linear format we have now and I think it's fairly simple to moderate.

In my opinion, a certain amount of latitude should be given for side discussions. But if a topic is genuinely being derailed, people should be directed to create a new topic for the emergent discussion.

Really, forum discussions are not so different from the verbal discussions we all have in our real lives. It shouldn't be too big of a stretch to apply the same types of protocols here as we do in those discussions.

  • 07.23.2012 6:28 AM PDT

Check out my Soundcloud account to hear some of my music.
Here's my twitter, in the off-chance you want that too.

Community Joe Interview: defnop552
Bye.

Posted by: dazarobbo
It's an entirely separate topic that is owned (referenced) by the main topic as a sub topic.
So if I click on the subtopic link it would take me to a new thread that cannot be accessed from the forum index but is contained within the original thread without being hosted there?

Am I on the right track?

*Sorry If I'm a little slow at this. I'm tired. :-) *

[Edited on 07.23.2012 6:32 AM PDT]

  • 07.23.2012 6:31 AM PDT

“Oh, it’s a little bit of everything, it’s the mountains, it’s the fog, it’s the news at six o’clock, it’s the death of my first dog, it’s the angels up above me, it’s the song that they don’t sing, It’s a little bit of everything.”
- Dawes, A little bit of everything

Posted by: dazarobbo
I see, thanks for clarifying. I had imagined it very similar to the diagram:
-> Original topic
--> Original discussion
--> Subtopic header/first post
----> Subtopic discussion

My text-based diagrams leave much to be desired, so here's an example:This is a threadThis is the original postThese are replies to the original postThis is a reply that sparks a subtopicThis is discussion on the subtopic, this, and all replies to the subtopic, could be collapsed from the subtopic spark

I see that the view I had of it seems more an elaboration on the quote system rather than a different kind of thread system. I like where this is going.

How would a subtopic be initiated and marked as such? I like the design you've proposed, but I'm having a little trouble figuring out how it would work dynamically. Take this thread, for instance, let's say I started a discussion about how I do not like our current quote system and others replied contributing mixed opinions. If this was considered a genuine subtopic, how would it happen? Would I be able to mark, when replying to your post, that mine is a subtopic (which I see both positive and negatives if this were the case) or would someone else have to decide this and mark it as such?


-edit- I see some questions about daz's design, here's how I understand it:

Currently, the forums have several boards (Community Forum, Flood, Etc.). Each board has many topics, and the topics have replies. The proposed system would add another kind of thread reply that would be to create another thread (yo dawg)...within the thread (threadception). Put more sanely, threads would become miniature forum boards with their own topics therein. Or simply: paperclip.

Is this what you had in mind, daz?

[Edited on 07.23.2012 7:18 AM PDT]

  • 07.23.2012 6:41 AM PDT

Key

Giving a much easier medium through which Floodians can go "This thread is now about World War II". They already don't get caught most of the time, so it's just more obnoxious now.

  • 07.23.2012 7:12 AM PDT
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This is a complicated and interesting idea; it bring up a lot of questions...

All I'm wondering is, what happened to manually creating a new topic?

  • 07.23.2012 12:12 PM PDT

I think it's wonderfully clever.

  • 07.23.2012 12:14 PM PDT

He's right on top of us! I wonder if he is using the same wind we are using...

Ockeghem
Missa Prolationum

I'm not such a fan of the links.

I like how with these forums you see all of every post under a topic just by clicking on the topic. If it is going to exist external to the topic that started the idea, shouldn't people just make a new topic?

If there was a way to still see the sub-topic posts within the main topic, that might be cool.

[Edited on 07.23.2012 12:21 PM PDT]

  • 07.23.2012 12:20 PM PDT

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