Thread:Talk:Flow Portal/Why the reordering of topic discussions?/reply (2)

The funny thing is that having these features should be relatively simple to program - they're just a query on topic names to show the topics index (LiquidTrheads have it!) and a database index to keep them ordered by date. It's all a matter of design, and providing a clear metaphor for conversations.

I find the "filtered topics" model in both LiquidThreads and Flow quite confusing; the focus on laser-guiding users to the conversation they're interested make it difficult to assess where a conversation is located, as they are devoid of context. This could be fixed by simply providing a more prominent, always visible link to the board name where the topic is stored, and a board index when the user navigates to the main view (which is ordered by creation time by default in order to provide the required spacial grounding - otherwise Flow_Portal/User_to_User_Discussions would be quite difficult to grasp).

Surely auto-signing, auto-tracking of conversations and a "reply" button to posts instead of editing the whole thread are needed features, and an improvement in presentation of talk pages. But these are not incompatible with the current main page metaphor. The personal feed is enough to guide users to the conversations they're interested in and keeping them updated.