Comments on: Richer Online Discussions

By: Luis

Luis — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 23:23:06 +0000

Mitchell: you might want to look at the Berkman center’s h2o system. While far from perfect, it does away with the fundamental assumption of newsgroups and email- that everyone gets to talk as much as they want, whenever they want. This really radically changes things. All the other web options mostly just recapitulate the existing mess of mail/newsgroup screaming, albeit sometimes in forms that are easier to use. If you actually want something different/better, you’ll have to have it done for you- but it’ll have to start with h2o or something constrained like it, rather than the traditional unconstrained screaming matches (email, newsgroups, etc.)- which do sometimes produce good results, but usually in spite of themselves.

By: sean bean

sean bean — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 20:50:59 +0000

oh for god’s sake… its called newsgroups… nothing works better for what you are talking about…

but mozilla seems intent on destroying the community that predates them…

By: Iang

Iang — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 13:34:21 +0000

> But I’d like to use a system that assumes only a web browser.

This is like chasing the holy grail; it’s always so perfect in vision, but we never get there. I’ve seen so many web-based application tools, and not one has ever even shown a glint of two-way promise.

Primary dialogue tools for me are these: email for important stuff. Chat program for uncertain stuff (skype). Voice for complicated stuff (skype). Personal meetings (flights) for the real hard stuff.

Blogs & wikis are IMHO as far as the browser has got in a serious communication tool, but they fall short of actually contributing where it matters: dialogue. On the whole, when they succeed, they mostly succeed in creating a podium for one person/group (blog), or in recording a dialogue happening elsewhere (forums), and not in supporting the actual dialogue over a complex issue, as it happens. Email is far superior for that.

One reason is amply shown here: lack of reliability. When I click on the Preview of this blog comment, I lose the text of my comment, and have to juggle with the back-button. These sorts of glitches happen with pretty much all web-based tools that I’ve ever seen. OTOH, email is reliable, once the send button is clicked. People panic when an email doesn’t get delivered, but they just walk away from web tools when the click goes wrong and loses their half-hour essay.

By: Brian King

Brian King — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 21:19:26 +0000

A discussion related to this took place recently on the Thunderbird dev newsgroup.

http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.apps.thunderbird/browse_thread/thread/3e4d0609268118ee

It was more related to how to discuss features and get things done, but you might be able to peel off some useful information from it.

FWIW, newsgroups are still the best for me, for the reasons already mentioned by other commenters. And they can be accessed via the browser.

By: Zoe

Zoe — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 20:41:10 +0000

I like forums, if they are set up in a user-friendly way. I find that a lot of forums are annoying to navigate, and that people who are fairly new to computers would have a difficult time knowing what to do.