Thread:Talk:Flow/Auto-archiving/reply (74)

I know that it's difficult to understand a visual structure by talking about it, but please try to make an effort. The summary you provide is still an inaccurate understanding of what Patrick and I have said, although you're closer. Now if you replace where you say "will somehow be placed very prominently at the top" with "will be prominently placed, as its shown expanded and with all threads above and below it contracted" you'll finally see what we're trying to say. The part about the software magically detecting whether a post is on-topic is an strawman argument, so let's forget that part and see how both systems actually differ.

That your particular example doesn't show problems doesn't mean that no other common situations exist that are problematic. The problem appears not when all comments are made in order, but when one post is made out-of-order as a reply to a comment in the middle of a thread. Let's see an example where the difference can be seen:

Alice: 1
 * Bob: 2
 * Alice: 3
 * Cartman: 4a
 * Bob:4b
 * Alice: 5
 * Bob: 6

Here, both comments 4a and 4b are replies to comment 3. Let's say Cartman's comment 4a is slightly off-topic, but still merits a late answer by Alice (call it 4a'), chronologically made after comment 6. In the current software, this is the resulting thread:

Alice: 1
 * Bob: 2
 * Alice: 3
 * Cartman: 4a
 * Alice: 4a' (offtopic)
 * Bob:4b
 * Alice: 5
 * Bob: 6

Here, only Alice and Cartman would be interested in continuing thread 4a; any other editor would continue the main thread with comment 7, normally by outdenting it below #6. However, if Bob returns to the thread right now, this is what he'll see:

Collapsed comments (1,2,3)
 * Cartman: 4a
 * Alice: 4a' (offtopic)
 * Collapsed commens (4b, 5, 6)

Given that Alice's offtopic comment is the last one made, it's the one that's show expanded. Can you see now how Flow's different presentation can highlight different parts of the conversation, even if the structure is exactly the same? Now anyone returning to the thread will be enticed to follow the offtopic conversation, instead of replying to the hidden comment #6.

The solution you suggest would be to manually split thread 4a, requiring a maintenance discipline that is currently not needed. However, Flow doesn't support sub-sections, so not even that solution is similar (in current talk pages, thread 4a could be continued as a new sub-section under the same section; with Flow it'll have to be located at a completely separate new Topic). I think the best option for Flow on Article Talk pages will be to avoid any form of collapsed comments, to make it as similar as possible to the current system.

I hope that you finally can see our concerns from this explanation. If you still can't see it, we'll have to wait until a working prototype is available to provide a more realistic and detailed example of the problem; our concerns are certainly not going away.