Thread:Talk:Flow/Auto-archiving/reply (42)

No, it's already a serious problem with current talk pages but I'm pretty sure the intended design of Flow will make it a lot worse. That's why I try to encourage you to think of alternatives and/or ways to mitigate the negative aspects of the design.

To describe my concerns as general as possible:
 * 1) I don't think a threaded discussion system were answers are sorted according to the comments they were posted on aids any discussion. It leads to many "sub-threads" (just to remind you, the topic of this thread is "Auto-archiving", but that's not what we're discussing any more). Most of these sub-threads don't ever reach any useful consensus at all. The discussion gets "stuck" in them (think of en:WP:Bikeshed). The initial topic of the thread gets out of sight.
 * 2) The other extreme – comments ordered strictly according to the date they were posted as in many forums – isn't the best solution either. The discussion goes on (with the newest comments always at the end). Sub-threads don't have the ability to emerge. The problem is that it's nearly impossible to have multiple discussions on the topic going on in parallel. Also if the discussion goes off-topic it's hard to get back on-topic.
 * 3) The "infinitely flexible" free-form wikitext that lets users do whatever they want actually is improving upon both thread models (as long as authors use the tools in a reasonable manner). On one hand one has the possibilities of 1. being able to create arbitrary thread structures. On the other hand when some discussions get too deeply nested and/or too off-topic one simply "outdents", the discussion continues at the bottom where the newest answers are (similar to 2.), and the former "sub-threads" start to die out.

I admit that 3. (our current discussion system) is only as good as the editors that are taking part in the discussion and for this reason it is not perfect either. But in my opinion it is still superior to 1. (what Flow should be) and clearly superior to 2., combining the advantages of both as good as possible.