Hello Roman,
I guess you and I have massively different opinions on this because I see
it exactly the other way.
Still, every time two or more people decide to answer to the same
message, they inadvertently create new thread branches.
The linear mode prevents each reply from becoming it's own branch.
To read new
replies (which are usually all over the place) you need to keep
switching contexts.
The linear model presents replies in such an order that more often than not
sequential posts are not on the same context so I have to, more often than
not, switch contexts for every single reply.
I'd say the only reason it's manageable is because
of massive embedded quotes.
In a tree mode, quoting is only *needed* indicating what part of a post you
are replying to. In the linear mode quoting is *needed* just to give context
if you reply to anything BUT the tail end of the thread.
What people actually *do* is a social problem, not a technical one.
With a linear thread, you can respond to several posts with just one
message. Even better, you can respond to an entire thread without
using quotations at all,
OK, I'll give you that one.
so it is possible to have something akin to a
real-life conversation with several people.
One of the things I LIKE about NGs are that they DON'T have that aspect (anything
said is implicitly in reply to only the most recent context) of real-life
conversations. Unless you are trying to prevent long detailed dialog (and
there are good reasons to do that in some contexts), intentionally bringing
that in is just stupid.
As a side note, I see an interesting analogy between this conversation and
memory models in CPUs: IIRC, the older CPUs enforced a total order on memory
operations but as the latency on operations grew relative to the latency
on local operations, the models started refusing to enforce a total order
but rather only enforced a partial order. I see a similar situation here.
Chat protocols (IRC) expect near-real-time response loops out of the user
and can get away with a nearly pure linear model. offline protocols like
newsgroups and e-mail expect that some users might not even see a post before
others have cycled several times through their response loop. Those protocols
generally present only a partial order.
--
<IXOYE><
