General

ajbiggie said:
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It just makes it easy to reply, see what was said by scrolling
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It's a lot easier than having to read a message and keep clicking links to see what other people have to say about that topic, etc.

Ah - I see. Yes, and I agree with you!

However...

...one thing that really bugs me about that format is that sometimes it's hard to tell who's replying to what. And even when you can, the conversation frequently wanders off-topic, and then has to be "steered" back on track by someone.

For a really active thread, there can be ten different conversations happening all at once, all jumbled together and split up across arbitrary pages. It gets really hard to follow after a while.

...which is why I wanted to use a hierarchical format, where each message is a reply to another message. With this format, there's never any confusion about who's replying to what. And in active thread were discussion has split off into ten different tangents, that's totally okay and everyone can follow it.

And when things wander off-topic, you can always just go back to the on-topic part of the thread and reply there.

...all of which is why I really wanted to use the hierarchical format. I really think it provides a better format for productive discussions.

Now like I said, I agree that it's a pain to click to a new page for each message. I actually spent a lot of time thinking about ways to combine the two formats and have multiple messages per page... but I just couldn't come up with any good way to do it. I know Slashdot kind of has it, but I've always hated they way they have it. It's impossible to follow.

If I come up with a good way to implement it, I'll do it, but for now, I think this is the lesser of two evils.

Besides, I wanted to try something different. If you want a vBulletin group, try HowardForums or MobileBurn. Seriously - they both have great sites and great forums! This is something different - an experiment, if you will. If people like it, great! If not, it was still fun to build...