I find branching discussions confusing. Here is why: the discussions unfold over a period of time. I might read several responses before I write my own to the original message. With the branched navigation I create an unwieldy semantic tree, where my response to the 2nd message, which incorporates the ideas from the 4th and 6th message is presented apart from the 4th and the 6th messages:
1-2-3-4-5-6 |_mine Gmail does it right: it flattens all the possible branches into one timeline. This results in several "civilizing" effects: 1) it discourages multiple branches in one thread, 2) it keeps discussion more focused on the original topic in the title, 3) people tend to read entire thread before responding to the original message, and 4) when the discussion veers too far from the original title, or if there is a switch in the topic, people tend to start new "root" topic. All are good consequences. Gmail does several other navigational things right, but that's another "root topic". -- Oleh Kovalchuke IxDA Colorado (co-organizer) http://ixdacolorado.collectivex.com On Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:18:49, Jesse Zbikowski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > There is an excellent program called trn, Threaded Read News. It has > this great feature that you can follow threads as they branch in > different directions. This is the only program I've seen which > actually maintains the tree structure of a thread rather than > treating it as linear. E.g. > > > (1) -(1)--(2)--[2] > %u2502-(1) - > %u2502 \-[1] > \-(1) -[1]--[1] > \-[1] > > This tree represents an initial article that has three direct replies > (the second column with three (1)%u2019s). Each reply has further > replies branching off from them. In two cases the subject line was > altered in the reply, as indicated by the increasing numbers. (from > the manual) > > This is an text-based POSIX program which I use on Ubuntu; I imagine > it should work on the OSX command line. > > http://trn.sourceforge.net/ > > > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . > Posted from the new ixda.org > http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=27411 > > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
