I guess it’s a question of degree. I would refer you to the awesome discussion engine at multiply.com, but they shut all that down last year and turned it into some strange quasi-shopping site.
I think we’re only referring to fading or collapsing posts you’ve read in the future, that is, further down in the stream, not those you have read in the past.
I might be nice to have the “speech bubble” you have replies thing on the front page navigation bar next to the forums link. I bet a bunch of people don’t even know that (very nice) functionality exists, since you don’t see it unless you are looking at the bbs site.
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Has the general volume of comments declined since the switch, or is it just my perception of the situation?
I don’t think that it is conducive for the overall level of participation to have the comments and main content separated, as it is now. I think it 's great that there is now a forum for unrelated discussion, but think it could hold its own, while story based comments moved back to whence they came. IMO, comments from the BB community are what dial the site up to eleven. With the current status quo, we’re stuck back at ten.
PS: five days is also too short. I’m in agreement about using a fixed number of days since last post threshold to prevent necroposting. Move on once the body is cold.
Can I suggest, for rabid comment monkeys like me, we have a “phrases I’d like to be alerted to” section in our profile?
So I’d add “guns, movies, church, tools, additive manufacturing” etc, and any BB article or comment containing any of those would be flagged to me?
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Saved searches with notifications then? I believe this has been proposed on http://meta.discourse.org recently.
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That’d do it.
How’s about some kind of live map of topics under discussion. I saw something yesterday, maybe an ad for The Economist, with moving bubbles representing what was going on.
Combine that with a time filter (sliding bar please) and selections to filter in (eg number of views, number of posts, number of likes … maybe in comparative percentage terms, or both, togglable between)
Then I could visit the bubblemap page and home in on zones I’m intrigued by.
Things like, people explaining the hairy saskwatch and why she’s attractive, referencing the “Doodle This” post from yesterday.
Some kind of meta-system to make it very alive. And maybe when you’re in a post, some kind of pathway map of “what they clicked next in bbs”, like Amazon’s “customers also bought …”
The list of posts works well, but I’d encourage bbs to take a big leap forward in community systems! Nullify the whole “no threads is useless” discussion by re-inventing the whole thing.
Hell, I could mock this up in VBA with some time. I’m always doing this stuff for clients in the work I do - just not on the web. Maybe I should.
Tell you what, my thinking is evolving - give me a $500k grant, and I’ll take 6 months to learn this all. You’d be contributing to education.
Make sure you check out
http://bbs.boingboing.net/categories
Which is available by clicking the word Categories on the homepage or via the drop down menu at the upper right.
Yep, not old enough yet to not learn new tricks, but quite broad. No word on the $500k?
word 
Word up!
Been patiently waiting for this one to clear itself up, but when I go to a discussion I have already been to before it lands me in the middle of the discussion no where near the new posts I came to look at. This is consistent behavior. I just came here and it dropped me in the discussion somewhere two weeks ago and I had to scroll to the bottom to get to new posts. It isn’t taking me to an old post of mine or to a spot I left from before.
I am not complaining, mind, just letting you know. I use Safari 6 on a newish Mac mini.
Can we repro this on Safari 6 @eviltrout? I have no access to a Mac.
FYI @codinghorror, @eviltrout just tested this on both Safari 6 on OSX Maverick & Safari 6 on OSX Lion and confirm the behaviour. At first I thought it was related to me switching machines but can replicate it consistantly.
I’ve tried this on Safari 6.0.5 on OSX Mountain Lion and can’t reproduce it. Perhaps you can give me a little more information:
- Does it happen EVERY time you enter a topic that you have already read some posts in? Or only sometimes?
- If you’ve read all the posts in a topic, does it correctly jump you to the bottom?
- If you refresh/reload the page while in the middle of a topic does it happen or do you get brought back to approximately where you left off?
Thanks!
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I am about to head to bed, but will spend some time during the day tomorrow and actively test this. I visit HTG, Meta Discourse and BBS regularly so will try and compile as much information as possible
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@eviltrout @codinghorror I have now tested this over the last 2 days and can confirm that I cannot replicate this anymore. I suspect I have been seeing this behaviour jumping between browsers on different machines, but it has been stable since I originally posted my response.
I’m completely with you. It makes me less likely to reply, as it’s a pain - I’m sure that’s true of a lot of folks, as comments seem to have gone down on stories overall.
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