in reply to Re: Re: Automatic Re-ing with numbers
in thread Automatic Re-ing with numbers

What I would love to see is two links off of Newest Nodes - the one we see now and Head (or something similar). I often find myself clicking on a link, then not even reading it until I click on the head node. I like having context when I read and I can't keep the context of the 10 threads I'm reading throughout the day straight.

I seldomly try to keep track of a thread. The UI of Perlmonks makes it so much harder to do than for instance on Usenet. Perlmonks doesn't give you a way to keep track of what you have read, and what you haven't (well, unless you read at most 40 posts, and vote for every post you read). Newest Nodes just don't do it.

Furthermore, people have the tendency of to not quote what they are responding to. Which means that if you try to keep track of a thread, you often encounter a reply that requires one or more clicks to parent posts to see what they are replying to.

Abigail

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Re^4: Automatic Re-ing with numbers
by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Aug 11, 2003 at 23:13 UTC
    people have the tendency of to not quote what they are responding to.
    Which they shouldn't (when they're not replying to a specific point in a long post, anyway), since we have a perfect archive here. Even if you read a reply to a post 4 year old post written 3 years before you ever first visited the site, the context is still available. Quoting offers much less on PerlMonks than on Usenet.
    The UI of Perlmonks makes it so much harder to [keep track of a thread] than for instance on Usenet.

    I do agree. Which is funny since the information is there - unlike on Usenet, where it depends on a lot of factors whether you will have the full context of a post.

    Maybe it should be an option to always show the parent of a node you're viewing.

    Makeshifts last the longest.

[reply]
      Which they shouldn't (when they're not replying to a specific point in a long post, anyway), since we have a perfect archive here.

      I wouldn't call it a perfect archive given that, with relatively few exceptions, one can go back and change nodes he wrote ages ago if he is so inclined.

      -sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";
[reply]
        A good point. What I'm alluding to, though, is that it would at least doable for PerlMonks to keep a full history, whereas for Usenet, it's not even technically possible. Personally, I'd very much welcome a history feature that lets one review old versions of a node.

        Makeshifts last the longest.

[reply]
        A reply falls below the community's threshold of quality. You may see it by logging in.
      Which they shouldn't (when they're not replying to a specific point in a long post, anyway), since we have a perfect archive here. Even if you read a reply to a post 4 year old post written 3 years before you ever first visited the site, the context is still available.

      I didn't say it's impossible - but it requires at least one other fetch, more if you want to go up further in the thread. And this is slow. It requires more actions, there's a lot of non-post in a fetch, and it requires you to read the entire post to understand the followup. It just makes it harder to follow a thread, not impossible.

      Abigail

[reply]
        I was not arguing about whether it is hard to follow a thread (it is), but you seemed to imply that people should quote more extensively. But that's just a bad workaround that would pollute the message base - my position is that we need a better interface, not for people to quote more.

        Makeshifts last the longest.

[reply]
Re: Re: Automatic Re-ing with numbers
by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Aug 12, 2003 at 08:39 UTC

    Please don't encourage PM to start the trend of fully quoting everything including the quoted quotes and the quotes those quotes quoted (ad nauseum) from previous posts per Usenet/mailing lists.

    I really hate that!

    You open a new msg, wade through 100 lines of quotes only to find a one liner of "Me too" or "I disagree" or worse, a funny quip. Gah!

    Examine what is said, not who speaks.
    "Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
    "When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." -Richard Buckminster Fuller
    If I understand your problem, I can solve it! Of course, the same can be said for you.
[reply]
      Please don't encourage PM to start the trend of fully quoting everything including the quoted quotes and the quotes those quotes quoted (ad nauseum) from previous posts per Usenet/mailing lists.

      Did I say people should fully quote the entire article? I doubt that, because I hate that myself. But I do appreciate relevant quotes, with replies interleaved. This sometimes means that an article is quoted in full, specially if the article is short, but usually it doesn't.

      You open a new msg, wade through 100 lines of quotes only to find a one liner of "Me too" or "I disagree" or worse, a funny quip. Gah!

      Such posts are usually annoying anyway, even if they don't quote.

      Abigail

[reply]

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