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Re:New way to have complex discussions by saurik on Monday May 06, 2024 @08:53PM (#40281161)
FWIW, many email clients -- before Gmail dumbed down email forever and no one seems to understand that email replies form a tree anymore -- also had (and maybe some still do?) that way of viewing the world.
Re:New way to have complex discussions by dredmorbius on Monday May 06, 2024 @11:01PM (#40281908)
There arae numerous email clients for Linux-like platforms that provide this, both text-based adn GUI.

Text: Mutt, Alpine, and emacs's mailer off the top of my head. There's a listing of other clients here: <https://www.tecmint.com/best-commandline-email-clients-for-l...>

GUI: Sylpheed, Thunderbird, KMail (KDE's Kontact suite still strikes me as one of the best I've encountered), Evolution, and Clawsmail.

My own strong preference remains mutt, and the ability to process huge amounts of complex email reasonably well is still utterly unmatched.

Re:New way to have complex discussions by Ringz on Tuesday May 07, 2024 @02:36AM (#40282989)
I like mutt, but aerc [0] is imho much better. But no matter which solution you prefer, editing emails in the terminal is so much more efficient. If the majority would switch to pure text emails instead of HTML...
Re:New way to have complex discussions by dredmorbius on Tuesday May 07, 2024 @02:44AM (#40283027)
Missing a link?
Re:New way to have complex discussions by Ringz on Tuesday May 07, 2024 @05:57AM (#40283886)
Re:New way to have complex discussions by dredmorbius on Wednesday May 08, 2024 @03:21PM (#40301893)
Thanks!
Re:New way to have complex discussions by steve_rambo on Tuesday May 07, 2024 @06:22AM (#40283999)
aerc sometimes breaks on non-compliant email because the author of the header parser refuses to introduce kludges to handle broken email. When it happens, the mail in question simply doesn't show up in the list. I fully understand that position, but it's not really ideal as a user who can't simply refuse to deal with broken crap. So after using it for a couple of months I reverted to neomutt.
Re:New way to have complex discussions by Ringz on Tuesday May 07, 2024 @05:42PM (#40291856)
Which mail software sends broken mails? As far as I know, this never happens to me.
Re:New way to have complex discussions by hvis on Monday May 06, 2024 @09:43PM (#40281391)
Thunderbird is still alive and developing.
Re:New way to have complex discussions by alberth on Monday May 06, 2024 @10:45PM (#40281816)
Or like the HN comment system :)
Re:New way to have complex discussions by layer8 on Tuesday May 07, 2024 @12:28AM (#40282342)
No, HN doesn’t have read/unread state, and also cuts off discussions after a day. This makes checking for new comments tedious, and prevents any longer discussions.
Re:New way to have complex discussions by xyzzy_plugh on Monday May 06, 2024 @10:52PM (#40281854)
The HN comment system discourages depth as there is a relatively shallow limit to threads. There also is no in-built concept of an inbox to monitor replies.
Re:New way to have complex discussions by alcover on Tuesday May 07, 2024 @04:31AM (#40283500)
This baffles me so much. It would be so simple and valuable to add.
Re:New way to have complex discussions by krapp on Tuesday May 07, 2024 @06:06AM (#40283941)
Hacker News prefers quality over quantity and signal over noise. Deeper threads tend to result in uninteresting, low quality comments as the subject matter diverges from the topic at hand, or flamewars, so long-term engagement is discouraged.
Re:New way to have complex discussions by cubefox on Tuesday May 07, 2024 @10:52AM (#40286259)
I think the main reason for flame wars isn't the depth of threads but the users. Usenet had no such depth limits, LessWrong doesn't have them today.
Re:New way to have complex discussions by Dessesaf on Tuesday May 07, 2024 @03:06PM (#40290146)
All these decisions add up to people just not replying to interesting questions.

More often than not, nobody will reply, so all threads are just one or two levels deep. Or in the rare case someone actually replies to an interesting point, it's usually not the original poster. Probably because they had no idea that anyone had even followed up on their post.

Requests for elaboration mostly go unanswered, and comments are made expecting no replies. So people just shoot ideas into the void, with interesting interactions only happening when someone famous comments.

Re:New way to have complex discussions by TeMPOraL on Tuesday May 07, 2024 @07:17AM (#40284258)
It discourages reflexive replies. The depth limit is a soft one, just an extra step that perhaps gives one a chance to pause and cool down.
Re:New way to have complex discussions by fifticon on Tuesday May 07, 2024 @06:36AM (#40284071)
Outlook killed it, gmail arrived at a scene with an already dead body :-(