granpa Posted February 2, 2009 Share Posted February 2, 2009 might I suggest that allowing people to post a reply without specifying which post it is in response to renders threaded view pretty well useless. seems to me that making that impossible would be a minor change. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sayonara Posted February 2, 2009 Share Posted February 2, 2009 That's a change for the VB team to implement, not us. I suspect they have never bothered because 99.9999943% of people use linear view. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
granpa Posted February 2, 2009 Author Share Posted February 2, 2009 of course 99% of people use linear view. threaded view doesnt work. I'm from craigslist forums and I miss threaded view. it would help keep threads on-topic since it would be easy to 'prune' branches that go off-topic. jus-say-n Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.7.4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cap'n Refsmmat Posted February 2, 2009 Share Posted February 2, 2009 It is possible to force people to select a specific post to reply to before being able to use Quick Reply, but I'm guessing in a significant portion of cases they'd just click the last post in the thread for convenience. It's sort of a major change in the entire conversational style of the forum. I'm not sure which would be best for SFN. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
granpa Posted February 2, 2009 Author Share Posted February 2, 2009 I can only speak for myself but on forums where I must select a post before using quick reply I dont just select the last post because I like to quote the post that I'm replying to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iNow Posted February 3, 2009 Share Posted February 3, 2009 I don't always NEED to quote a post for a reply. What then? What if it's a new branch to the conversation? Quoting someone else before doing so would actually ADD to the confusion in such cases, not make things better. I think while we sometimes run into problems by leaving it up to the individual on how to process the post (i.e. sometimes they don't quote and it's a PITA), the costs of forcing it on people far outweigh the benefits. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
granpa Posted February 3, 2009 Author Share Posted February 3, 2009 then you reply to the op. or start a new thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iNow Posted February 3, 2009 Share Posted February 3, 2009 Alright. Talk to me like I'm a fifth grader. Give me the bullet-point list. What are the benefits of doing this? What's the payoff for all of the effort and maing the change? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D H Posted February 3, 2009 Share Posted February 3, 2009 How would a threaded view look in this thread, just to pick an example, where there is no one obvious threading because everyone has done the quick reply? Some other issues: ScienceForums has a merged post capability. Consecutive posts by a single user with no intervening posts by other users are merged into one. What if one quotes one post and another quotes another? Similarly, what if a single post quotes multiple prior posts? The concept of a threaded view is itself linear. A DAG (directed acyclic graph) view would be much more realistic, but admittedly a bit hard to depict. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cap'n Refsmmat Posted February 3, 2009 Share Posted February 3, 2009 You can see what the different modes look like above the OP on the right where it says "Display Modes." The merged posts feature would definitely break when replying to two different posts -- it'd merge the replies. We'd have to turn it off if we wanted threaded mode to be the default view. I think the trouble with threaded mode is that it is not very intuitive to use at first. Linear just shows the posts, which is simple -- threaded would need some major user interface improvements to be good for regular viewing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
granpa Posted February 3, 2009 Author Share Posted February 3, 2009 (edited) might I suggest that allowing people to post a reply without specifying which post it is in response to renders threaded view pretty well useless. seems to me that making that impossible would be a minor change. You can see what the different modes look like above the OP on the right where it says "Display Modes." The merged posts feature would definitely break when replying to two different posts -- it'd merge the replies. We'd have to turn it off if we wanted threaded mode to be the default view. I think the trouble with threaded mode is that it is not very intuitive to use at first. Linear just shows the posts, which is simple -- threaded would need some major user interface improvements to be good for regular viewing. lets see what happens when I quote the op and another post. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergededit:in threaded view it only responds to the second post. (this line was added by simple quick reply) Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedHow would a threaded view look in this thread, just to pick an example, where there is no one obvious threading because everyone has done the quick reply? Some other issues: ScienceForums has a merged post capability. Consecutive posts by a single user with no intervening posts by other users are merged into one. What if one quotes one post and another quotes another? Similarly, what if a single post quotes multiple prior posts? The concept of a threaded view is itself linear. A DAG (directed acyclic graph) view would be much more realistic, but admittedly a bit hard to depict. this is quoting a third post edit:no change. in threaded view it still only responds to the second post. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedthe only way that one could use threaded view with these other features would be to list, in theaded view, each post as a response to each and every post that it quotes. which is probably not possible. Edited February 3, 2009 by granpa Consecutive posts merged. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ydoaPs Posted February 7, 2009 Share Posted February 7, 2009 IMHO, threaded view just causes confusion; It's more difficult to follow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Klaynos Posted February 7, 2009 Share Posted February 7, 2009 I have to say I've never really been a fan of threaded views on forums... it's just what you 'grow up with' it seems... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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