Hetch Litman's picture
Hetch Litman from Somewhere in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest is reading The Violent Bear it Away by Flannery O'Connor December 1, 2011 - 12:20am

I could be drunk. Nay, I am drunk but none the less can someone explain to me why there is no reply to specific post button on each post? Yes yes I understandand that that you can post in a specific thread by scrolling to the bottom but why in the world is there no reply button on each post so we can have a conversation?

Don't make me go Guantanamo on your ass don't make me tear out your plumimg. . Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

wickedvoodoo's picture
wickedvoodoo from Mansfield, England is reading stuff. December 1, 2011 - 6:21am

@ Kelly

Probably something to do with how the forum is coded. It is a different layout to most after all.

The best person to ask is definitely Kirk - I remember when the forum frirst launched he was taking questions/suggestions and I now cannot remember if direct replies are one of the things he said he was working on.

Quoting specific people came up - not sure about direct replies though. I'm sure you'll get an answer soon enough. In the meantime the old @whoever will have to do heh.

Kirk's picture
Admin
Kirk from Pingree Grove, IL is reading The Book Of The New Sun December 1, 2011 - 8:26am

There isn't a reply-to-post because in lengthy, multi-page discussions threaded posts become impossible to follow.

Reply-to-post exists in places where it is usable, like on workshop submissions.

aliensoul77's picture
aliensoul77 from a cold distant star is reading the writing on the wall. December 1, 2011 - 9:53am

Or on Entertainment Weekly dot com when you want to tell somebody that their accessment of a TV show is LAME!  Plus I think the specific reply to button kind of polarizes the conversation and in a bulletin board setting like this, it should be like a group orgy.  No one's organs get ignored. 

avery of the dead's picture
avery of the dead from Kentucky is reading Cipher Sisters December 1, 2011 - 10:16am

I feel like you have an unnatural obsession with orgies. 

Hetch Litman's picture
Hetch Litman from Somewhere in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest is reading The Violent Bear it Away by Flannery O'Connor December 1, 2011 - 12:57pm

Interesting observations all. I would be lying if I said I understood how being able to communicate or ask further questions polarizes a conversation or how multi page discussions become hard to follow. I remmeber the BBS boards of old and imho it was nice when those days were gone and we had proper forums with functions for more in depth conversations. But, hey, its a pretty place ya got here and I've already spent my money so I guess I'll just be hanging around and getting to know you all. Its your world and I just live in it. haha. Besides I really like reading all of the posts here and I love the workshop and classes. In other words, thanks for all the hard work. Its a budding writers community and Im thrilled Im in on the ground floor as it were.

 

@wickedvoodoo, I think I prefer the mariage of two old school standards:

 

 

"@wickedvoodoo said: Quoting specific people came up - not sure about direct replies though. I'm sure you'll get an answer soon enough. In the meantime the old @whoever will have to do heh."

looks pretty good if I do say so myself.

aliensoul77's picture
aliensoul77 from a cold distant star is reading the writing on the wall. December 1, 2011 - 1:09pm

@averydoll--I know, I noticed that too.  What's funny is I don't watch that much orgy porn either.  I'm more of a one on one kind of guy whether it be woman/man, man/man, woman/woman or woman/horse.  Or man/horse, maybe even centaurs making love to unicorns.  Hot!

Hetch Litman's picture
Hetch Litman from Somewhere in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest is reading The Violent Bear it Away by Flannery O'Connor December 1, 2011 - 1:20pm

"@aliensoul said: Or man/horse, maybe even centaurs making love to unicorns.  Hot!"

Dolphins, man. Dolphins and unicorns for the win.

Kirk's picture
Admin
Kirk from Pingree Grove, IL is reading The Book Of The New Sun December 1, 2011 - 1:22pm

There certainly can be benefits with threaded discussions, but the reason why they have gone out of fashion is that they are simply too difficult for most users to use, or even care to use. 

Slashdot is one of the few holdouts, that I know of but as seen here It's just a total nightmare to attempt to follow at all. It makes sense they use that format though because of who their audience is.

The real difficulty is what happens once you have, say, 500 comments? In a threaded discussion, the only way to make it remotely usable is to load the entire thing in one page. In the old days, this was kind of okay because all that was posted was text. But in 2011, if I dumped a 500 comment discussion on one page (with text, images and videos), it would take a long time for your computer to load it. Add in the chance that someone is using the site on a phone or iPad and it is just an awful experience. That is where paging comes in.

So what happens when you have 5 pages with 100 comments each and there are new posts on the first, third and fifth pages. How do you navigate to what is new? And even if you get to one of the new items, how do you get to the next new comment, 2 pages later?

It used to work because everything we did were so much less complex and people who were involved REALLY wanted to be involved. Today, I think it's a little excessive to expect a casual or less savvy person to learn how to navigate a message board. Especially, since they are probably used to using very simple message boards without even knowing it (think Facebook comments).

avery of the dead's picture
avery of the dead from Kentucky is reading Cipher Sisters December 1, 2011 - 2:08pm

@averydoll--I know, I noticed that too

 

This made me laugh out loud in my office and caused people to come in and ask me what i was doing....good job!

Hetch Litman's picture
Hetch Litman from Somewhere in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest is reading The Violent Bear it Away by Flannery O'Connor December 1, 2011 - 2:48pm

@kirk. No I fully recognize your point. I was thinking more in the manner of a standard forum where there is a quote box with the post that you are quoting embedded in your response. See, I don't know. This page http://hfboards.com/showthread.php?p=40268085#post40268085 . That is more what I was alluding too and not multithreaded posts like n slash dot.

Edit: I just saw someone quote in my class here and he said use blockquote. That is in essence all I was asking if we had here. Hmmmm. Can you use that in all the different forums? That blockquote sure is the best looking way I've ever seen to quote someone. Like I said you guys have a gorgeous site here. Thanks for taking the time.

fport's picture
fport from Canada is reading The World Until Yesterday - Jared Diamond November 11, 2012 - 2:07pm

The blockquote is quite adequate for rolling a conversation forward, cut, clip and paste what you need to allude to or dispute or question - if it's not enough, hard questions follow or more quote shows up. I've been playing in the forums for days getting used to things. Part of the investment I'm making - besides that pittance of $9.00 a month.

And if I haven't mentioned it yet, and I haven't, yes this is a beautiful and somewhat elegant site.