News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on As internet forums die off, finding community can be harder than ever. Parent comment

Re:As internet forums die off, finding community can be hard... by mft_ on Thursday November 19, 2020 @05:08PM (#25154951)
Not sure I understand - in your example, isn’t it the archiving that’s to blame, rather than the tree/threaded format?

In more traditional forums (e.g. VBB) one effectively replicates the tree format through quoting - just without the tree being so clearly displayed.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:As internet forums die off, finding community can be hard... by Sharlin on Thursday November 19, 2020 @05:29PM (#25155140)
In tree-format discussion, new replies disappear into the depths of subtrees, whereas in a linear thread they're always at the bottom and easily marked as new. There should be a way to somehow switch between the formats.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:As internet forums die off, finding community can be hard... by jlokier on Thursday November 19, 2020 @06:07PM (#25155444)
Some forums do both at the same time, which can be nice.

E.g. showing every comment linearly with time, but each comment that has replies also has a "show replies" link which expands when clicked to show the replies as children. Those replies are the same comments shown later in the linear list; it's just a convenient alternate way of showing them on request in context.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:As internet forums die off, finding community can be hard... by mft_ on Thursday November 19, 2020 @05:39PM (#25155209)
Fair point - thanks.
[ Parent | on HN ]