It would be nice if we could transplant threads to where they are appropriate, with just a link to and from the old location where they were inspired.
We already can—I’ve just done that.
You might object that the process to do so is cumbersome. I quite agree. On the other hand, the Law of Unintended Consequences applies whenever you think “I wish...”. It is always wise, when considering a new software feature, to think of the potential downsides.
I can think of at least one: to some, moving a thread could turn into a “weapon” to be used against comments they would prefer to make less visible. Moving threads at a buttn press would be a power, and power tends to corrupt.
Could you use a distributed revision control system directly as a discussion board?
So I pull from a whole bunch of people who I think are worth reading, but I get everyone they pull from, so you can join if anyone invites you and if everyone stops pulling from you, you are dropped. I can edit comments, but everyone gets the history.
Mercurial with the GPG extension might suffice. You wouldn’t have the software enforce anything, you’d rely on the audit trail to catch people after the fact.
Following up on a comment by byrnema:
We already can—I’ve just done that.
You might object that the process to do so is cumbersome. I quite agree. On the other hand, the Law of Unintended Consequences applies whenever you think “I wish...”. It is always wise, when considering a new software feature, to think of the potential downsides.
I can think of at least one: to some, moving a thread could turn into a “weapon” to be used against comments they would prefer to make less visible. Moving threads at a buttn press would be a power, and power tends to corrupt.
You need to make the reference point in both directions, I think—in other words, to follow up that comment with a pointer here.
That’s what I mean by “cumbersome”. :)
Could you use a distributed revision control system directly as a discussion board?
So I pull from a whole bunch of people who I think are worth reading, but I get everyone they pull from, so you can join if anyone invites you and if everyone stops pulling from you, you are dropped. I can edit comments, but everyone gets the history.
Mercurial with the GPG extension might suffice. You wouldn’t have the software enforce anything, you’d rely on the audit trail to catch people after the fact.
You could certainly do that, but having more layers of software take care of things is extremely helpful.
In fact, these days there are several wikis that use DVCSs as the backing store, and support offline editing and merging.