An issue in online discourse is “tendency of threads to branch more than they come back together.”
Sometimes branching threads are fine, in particular when you’re just exploring ideas for fun or natural curiosity. But during important disagreements, I notice a tendency in myself to want to try to address every given individual point, when actually I think the thing to do is figuring out what the most important points are and focus on those. (I think this important in-part because time is precious)
I’m wondering if there are UI updates to forum software that could try to address this systematically. Maybe include a React labeled ‘too many threads’, or ‘in the weeds’.
I don’t know of any good way to signal or display that a comment has multiple parents, and thus “merges” two threads. There are a number of boards and discussion systems where a moderator closes a thread (either making it read-only or just deleting unwanted further follow-ups) to keep noise down.
Note that this is a problem in verbal debates as well—there are always sub-points that spawn further sub-points, and even if you notice a merge point, it’s hard to remember that you did.
An issue in online discourse is “tendency of threads to branch more than they come back together.”
Sometimes branching threads are fine, in particular when you’re just exploring ideas for fun or natural curiosity. But during important disagreements, I notice a tendency in myself to want to try to address every given individual point, when actually I think the thing to do is figuring out what the most important points are and focus on those. (I think this important in-part because time is precious)
I’m wondering if there are UI updates to forum software that could try to address this systematically. Maybe include a React labeled ‘too many threads’, or ‘in the weeds’.
I don’t know of any good way to signal or display that a comment has multiple parents, and thus “merges” two threads. There are a number of boards and discussion systems where a moderator closes a thread (either making it read-only or just deleting unwanted further follow-ups) to keep noise down.
Note that this is a problem in verbal debates as well—there are always sub-points that spawn further sub-points, and even if you notice a merge point, it’s hard to remember that you did.