TL;DR: Being able to click quotes to go back in time is nice, but being able to go forward is equally important-- and having it all displayed in a view similar to the full thread but filtered to the posts of interest would be the best interface.
I just went into a thread that has 8 pages of posts. There was a post on page 1 that I considered commenting on but it's likely that someone else would have made the same comment by now. We need a way to see all of the posts that quote a post so we can see the conversation.
I'd like to see the posts filtered so that only the ones replying to the select post are displayed-- kind of a "focus view". Separate options to extend the filter in both directions (backwards in time to the original post that started it all off, and forward in time quoting posts that quote posts that quote posts...) would also be welcome.
I've seen forums that give a "threaded view", I think the earlier MR system did so and Reddit is an extreme example, but these typically use indentation or disclosure controls to achieve the structure, and it tends to get difficult to follow when the forum gets 100's of posts like these do now. And then there's the whole problem of multiquotes.
Another, I believe less effective, way to do this would be to just give the list of quotes in a sort of search results page.
I think this has become a critical need and will help in 3 major ways:
I just went into a thread that has 8 pages of posts. There was a post on page 1 that I considered commenting on but it's likely that someone else would have made the same comment by now. We need a way to see all of the posts that quote a post so we can see the conversation.
I'd like to see the posts filtered so that only the ones replying to the select post are displayed-- kind of a "focus view". Separate options to extend the filter in both directions (backwards in time to the original post that started it all off, and forward in time quoting posts that quote posts that quote posts...) would also be welcome.
I've seen forums that give a "threaded view", I think the earlier MR system did so and Reddit is an extreme example, but these typically use indentation or disclosure controls to achieve the structure, and it tends to get difficult to follow when the forum gets 100's of posts like these do now. And then there's the whole problem of multiquotes.
Another, I believe less effective, way to do this would be to just give the list of quotes in a sort of search results page.
I think this has become a critical need and will help in 3 major ways:
- It will prevent endless repeats of the same response
- It will make it easier to quickly check the context of a post before replying-- hopefully preventing misunderstandings where the quoter is responding to the words in a single post while the quotee believes that the response is taking all of the conversation to date into account and thus finds the response bizarre or aggressive.
- It will make it easier to filter the signal from the noise and engage in the more interesting parts of a conversation while not being overwhelmed by the cocktail party effect. A conversation about the technical details of OLED could persist in a room of people screaming Apple is doomed, and Samsung didn't invent anything.
