HN Explorer

Ask HN: Threaded vs. Flat Discussion

2 points by magackame ↗ HN
I thought about implementing a simple HN-like forum with the assumption of a single instance being like a subreddit (like r/emacs is just about emacs, no categories), but I am having a headache deciding between threaded vs flat.

Do you think one is inherently superior, depends on type of forum (discussion/support/development/etc) or there should be a UI toggle?

3 comments

[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 20.9 ms ] thread
toomuchtodo
I have been thinking similarly to support threads on Bluesky/AT protocol (to replace Reddit subs). I think threads have value on some discussion topics, but not all, and it is hard to know in advance which will be most useful before the discussion happens. Mods here are somewhat privileged in that HN supports threads, and they can move comments and subthreads around at will to shape the discourse.

TLDR Support threads, but enable flexibility when doing so (imho, ymmv, etc)

Tomte
Toggle won't work, because people will see different variants of the discussion and reference it ("the sibling comment", "two above").

I was net-socialized in Usenet, strongly believe that threaded is much superior, but would choose flat every time for a project today.

PaulHoule
I think you could rank a flat conversation better than you could a threaded conversation. What if the best comment in a discussion is a reply to a mediocre reply to a mediocre reply to a mediocre reply? Are you going rank a chain of mediocre replies at the top of the page and find many users won't bother to scroll down to the good one?

One could make the case that the real structure of a discussion is a graph and just because somebody posted comment Y as a reply to comment X doesn't mean that comments C, M and S say roughly the same thing as X and that Y could just as well be a reply to C, M and S.

One project I have on my board is a demo that reranks a huge discussion from HN and reveals the latent structure through clustering if not "deep analysis" techniques that are feasible in the LLM age.