What do you think about threaded forum software?

That would be fine. I'd have no problem with that at all.

Would we be able to chose which threads to view which way? That would be awesome!

I have been involved in some serious topic threads that have been so disrupted by diversions that it's been annoying. It would be great to see those topics threaded if we could opt for it.

What I had had in mind was for there to be a link/button on each thread that allows you to toggle it. Whatever you last set it to is how threads display till you change it. So you could enter a thread, toggle it one way to peruse the thread, toggle it back and be back to the other way.

I just spent some time figuring out what's been happening at Taunton.
Lots of disgruntlement re forum changes.

A whack of members went and set up their own delphi forum (which was what Taunton had been using until late December 2009).

I hopped in there to look at the thread/flat options. It can be done on the fly - literally in the middle of a thread you can switch from reading flat or threaded.

Looks clunky (basic delphi must have been designed a long time ago) - I'm sure there must be more graceful options out there.

That would be amazing.

Really amazing.

Revolutionary.

I would love that.

First, Robert thank you once more for the site. The only site that seems more user friendly is http://www.democraticunderground.com/, in that the title of the posts of the thread are placed at the beginning of the actually thread and can be used as a sort of table of contents.

oh, and more fish!

I had a look, that was one of the earlier ideas we wanted to implement here, where the thread was still flat but there was a threaded table of contents. It's a more conservative move towards threaded discussions than I now have in mind.

How would a threaded forum impact on the eventually vastly upgraded search feature you hope to install?

I'm not sure I'd like the threaded forum version, especially if there are numerous sidebar chats going on within a thread. What if one of those sidebar chats proves extremely interesting? How would someone not participating in the parent thread ever find that interesting sidebar chat nested within?

Would we be able to split off the sidebar children to convert them to parent threads with their own topic titles and tags? Speaking of tags, how would the tagging system work with a threaded forum? Would we be tagging only the parent threads or would the sidebar chat children also be able to be tagged with unrelated labels from the parent?

The forums at iVillage are threaded (or were when I was active there). It worked fine for those familiar with threading and those with the knack/knowledge to reply within a threadline rather than at one of the previous levels. It made for some pretty disjointed discussions when there we numerous active sub-threads on a single topic.

One advantage was that it was fairly easy to bring a derailed topic back onto the subject simply by replying at the proper level in the tree.

I don't know... I'm familiar with both ways. I personally prefer the flat layout. I do use "reply all" fairly regularly but it wouldn't kill me to lose that option.

I think threaded forums lend themselves better to actually discussing a topic for the purpose of reaching a conclusion about something. I use them for discussing technical questions where I am looking for a real functional answer to something.

Flat forums on the other hand tend to promote less rigid discussions which simply exist for the sake of discussion.

Despite its imperfections, I think I prefer it the way it is.

I think that this community has forced to absorb enough change for awhile.

Yeah, so having an extra option would be an indignity right? I've already said that the plan would not be to eliminate the current flat format so I think you'll survive.

This site is very much a work in progress. If you dislike change just for the sake of disliking it you won't be happy here, I consider the site less than 20% finished. Given that the joy of building it is why it exists that isn't something that is likely to change.

I have not dealt with, that I noticed, threaded forums (or, hey, was that what going on..), but the way you are hoping to work it out sounds useful. Given a choice, I'd probably land back on flat, but like Boomer, I can see the usefulness and probably would like it.

Possibility to toggle is inviting. Just looked back and see you would try/implement that.

I dislike technical tinkering that disrupts the quality of human interaction. I understand that this is fun for you, but we are still trying to recover from your last adventure.

What are the types of things you visualize for the other 80%?

Who's the we you keep trying to speak for? You keep telling me how much I ruin the place for you but you stick around, I think you just like complaining.

In any case, if you don't like change, a forum that has been sustained largely for the founder's love of tinkering with it is probably not a great haunt for you. The ambitious plans and promise of incessant change have been here from day one.

But honestly I think you'll be fine and will still be complaining about something else after the upcoming changes. What else is new?

I prefer not to talk about the ones that are too distant for various reasons (not the least of which comes from generating anticipation/confusion when it's nowhere near finalized) but some upcoming ones we've talked about are:

Groups (so that others can run sub-communities the way they want).
Blogs (for people who want to maintain diaries that may be more personal or intimate than forum posts).

And there are a couple of other things that I think may eventually eclipse (in terms of use) the forum part of the site eventually.

I don't know why, but when I see threaded forums I think of the old DOS and having to use command prompts. It visually looks old school to me. I have trouble following them due to my vision.

Given the option, I'd stay flat, but certainly wouldn't begrudge having the option, others using it, or allowing you to tinker.

you know you want to

I wouldn't mind losing "reply all" at all. Sometimes it increases confusion. It almost never helps.

I find "reply all" very helpful. It makes it clear you're talking to everyone, not responding to a particular poster.

I'm just reading along here, trying to get more idea of what a threaded forum might actually be like. I've never experienced this before.