'How to solve the "thread" puzzle?'
Submitted by nicareal on Tue, 2010/05/18 - 07:53.
The question was brought up recently on another thread. Since there is really no site policy for this, every poster makes her/his own decision where to place her/his replies.
I really don't think we need any 'rules' to govern this, but the interesting question, 'How can anyone that has not followed the thread develop from the beginning, follow the train of thought?' was raised and I think it is s subject worthy of discussion.
We are, for the most part, trying to provide information to people seeking info about Nicaragua. If a thread jumps all over the place and is difficult to follow some of the info-seekers may not find what they are looking for.
What could we do to make the threads a little more organized?
1.) I really like the layout of the new Yahoo News Comment section. Each Comment is shown in the order it is posted. Comments on each comment are placed under that comment but not immediately visible on the main page. Only the number of 'Sub- Comments' is shown. This would likely mean a complete revamping of the site, so I'm not sure this is practical.
2.) Each comment posted directly under the initial 'thread starter' could be given a number so people can easily see in what order the comments were posted.
3.)This is probably the easiest and most immediate solution: We can all agree to post only comments addressing ONLY the 'thread-starter' post. Any comment addressing subsequent comments would be posted directly under that post.
If we keep in mind to make the information easy to find for newcomers and visitors, we increase the value of the site to others and to ourselves.
I'd love to read other suggestions how to eliminate the need to try to decipher the mystery by checking each posting date and time in order for the thread to make sense.
Is everyone aware of the
Is everyone aware of the "Viewing Options" settings"? With the "Flat List" option, all posts are listed in chronological order, oldest first or newest first (again, your choice). The biggest problem with this is that it becomes very difficult to tell which post the responder was responding to. This is actually the most common method among the world's forums, but they also allow for easy quoting of a previous post so it is very easy to see which post the response goes with. The "threaded List" option shows everything by thread. That is any response to a particular post or thread is shown indented, directly below the post to which the response is made, in chronological order. In this case, it is very easy to determine which thread someone is responding to. This assumes that everyone understands that when they click on "Reply", the response corresponds to that specific thread, and not one above or below. I have seen many cases where someone obviously didn't know that, or accidentally clicked the "Reply" for a comment other than the one they wanted to reply to. The down side, of course is that if you look at the whole page, everything is not necessarily in chronological order. Each thread is in order, but not the overall page. Unfortunately, a better answer is probably not within the options available with Drupal, although Phil is the only one here who can answer that one for sure.
if Drupal had a
Quote tool/option it would definitely help out organize the responses/replies.
like you mentioned,only phil knows that .
Thread Puzzle
I´ve seen several different things happen as threads begin to grow (or forced to die):
1) The comments create completely new topics and lead off in a totally different directions or a highly specialized one. As a result it is difficult to return to the original topic.
2) A few participants make sarcastic or unconstructive comments effectively killing further activity. This frequently kills the thread.
3) A topic grows far beyond the bounds of its original entry encompassing more than potential commenters care to deal with. Sometimes this kills the thread.
4) A new topic is started in order to bring comments back to the original line of thought. This often creates confusion because topic titles virtually coincide.
5) Users (like myself) who may not be able or care to constantly monitor the forum often have trouble entering a specific topic when the commenters are at a specific point in the ¨life¨ of that thread. As a result, the user entry may appear off-topic because the thread has already diverted from its previous direction.
6) A valuable thread becomes buried in the forum and thus lost to future readers. After all, isn´t building a knowledge base one of the main purposes for the forum.
Can these issues be adequately managed? I have no idea.
Aisabe, Papatara
Hotel Papatara, Alamikamba, Municipio de Prinzapolka RAAN, Nicaragua (505) 8618 2750 cellphone