It seems to me that these types of conversations would benefit if they were not chains but trees instead. Usually when two people have a disagreement/different point of view, there is usually some root cause of this disagreement. When the conversation is a chain, I think it likely results in one person explaining her arguments/making several points, another one having to expand on each, and then at some point in order for this to not result in massively long comments, the participants have to paraphrase, summarise or ignore some of the arguments to make it concise. If there was an option at some point to split the conversation into several branches, it could possibly make the comments shorter, easier to read, and go deeper. Also, for the reader not participating in the conversation it can be easier to follow the conversation and get to the main point influencing his view.
I’m not sure if something like this was done before and it would obviously require a lot more work on the UI, but I just wanted to share the idea as it might be worth considering.
Came here to comment this. As it is, this seems like just talking on discord/telegram, but with the notion of publishing it later. What I really lack when discussing something is the ability to branch out and backtrack easily and have a view of all conversation topics at once.
That being said, I really like the idea of dialogues, and I think this is a push in the right direction, I have enjoyed the dialogue I read so far greatly. Excited to see where this goes
Thinking more on this and to friends who voiced that non-trees/dag dialog makes it non appealing to them also (especially in contexts where I was inviting them to have dialogue together), would there be interests in making a PR for this feature? I might work on this directly
I have done something similar using draw.io for arguments regarding a complex feature. Each point often had multiple counterpoints, which themselves sometimes split into other points. I think this is only necessary for certain discussions and should probably not be the default though.
sure, I’m actually not suggesting that it should necessarily be a feature of dialogues on lw, it was just a suggestion for a different format (my comment generated almost opposite karma/agreement votes, so maybe this is the reason?). it also depends on frequency how often do you use the branching—my guess is that most don’t require it in every point, but maybe a few times in the whole conversation might be useful.
Perhaps instead of a tree it would be better to have a directed acyclic graph, since IME even if the discussion splits off into branches one often wants at some point to respond to multiple endpoints with one single comment. But I don’t know if there’s really a better UI for that shape of discussion than a simple flat thread with free linking/quoting of earlier parts of discussions. I don’t think I have ever seen a better UI for this than 4chan’s.
yeah definitely, there could be a possibility for quoting/linking answers from other branches—i haven’t seen any UI that would support something like it, but also my guess is that it wouldn’t be too difficult to make one. my thinking about it was that there would be one main branch and several other smaller branches that could connect to the main one, so that some points can be discussed in greater depth. also, the branching should probably not happen always, but just when both participants occasionally agree on them.
It seems to me that these types of conversations would benefit if they were not chains but trees instead. Usually when two people have a disagreement/different point of view, there is usually some root cause of this disagreement. When the conversation is a chain, I think it likely results in one person explaining her arguments/making several points, another one having to expand on each, and then at some point in order for this to not result in massively long comments, the participants have to paraphrase, summarise or ignore some of the arguments to make it concise. If there was an option at some point to split the conversation into several branches, it could possibly make the comments shorter, easier to read, and go deeper. Also, for the reader not participating in the conversation it can be easier to follow the conversation and get to the main point influencing his view.
I’m not sure if something like this was done before and it would obviously require a lot more work on the UI, but I just wanted to share the idea as it might be worth considering.
Came here to comment this. As it is, this seems like just talking on discord/telegram, but with the notion of publishing it later. What I really lack when discussing something is the ability to branch out and backtrack easily and have a view of all conversation topics at once.
That being said, I really like the idea of dialogues, and I think this is a push in the right direction, I have enjoyed the dialogue I read so far greatly. Excited to see where this goes
Thinking more on this and to friends who voiced that non-trees/dag dialog makes it non appealing to them also (especially in contexts where I was inviting them to have dialogue together), would there be interests in making a PR for this feature? I might work on this directly
I have done something similar using draw.io for arguments regarding a complex feature. Each point often had multiple counterpoints, which themselves sometimes split into other points. I think this is only necessary for certain discussions and should probably not be the default though.
sure, I’m actually not suggesting that it should necessarily be a feature of dialogues on lw, it was just a suggestion for a different format (my comment generated almost opposite karma/agreement votes, so maybe this is the reason?). it also depends on frequency how often do you use the branching—my guess is that most don’t require it in every point, but maybe a few times in the whole conversation might be useful.
Perhaps instead of a tree it would be better to have a directed acyclic graph, since IME even if the discussion splits off into branches one often wants at some point to respond to multiple endpoints with one single comment. But I don’t know if there’s really a better UI for that shape of discussion than a simple flat thread with free linking/quoting of earlier parts of discussions. I don’t think I have ever seen a better UI for this than 4chan’s.
yeah definitely, there could be a possibility for quoting/linking answers from other branches—i haven’t seen any UI that would support something like it, but also my guess is that it wouldn’t be too difficult to make one. my thinking about it was that there would be one main branch and several other smaller branches that could connect to the main one, so that some points can be discussed in greater depth. also, the branching should probably not happen always, but just when both participants occasionally agree on them.