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Discussion VS Chronological View

redniwediS·10/9/2014, 12:23:01 AM·6 votes·755 views

Until today I did not know there was a chronological view, and I only discovered it by turning it on by accident. It is nice, but having both discussion and chronological view seems to be causing some problems. Depending on what view you are in a thread could appear to be a coherent talk between people, or a random mess of points and replies that do not connect to one another.

A few threads in particular have had, in discussion view, a few discussions with everything tabbed correctly followed by a series of one off posts that only make sense in chronological view. I can see the merits of both view styles, but the two do not mesh particularly well with one another.

GD only appears to have chronological view available, and that makes it's threads both consistent and as easy to follow as a GD thread can be. Perhaps more boards should have a forced view, or maybe people who create threads should be given the option to decide which will be forced in their thread. I can personally make due with either view, but consistency would be a wonderful addition.

3 Comments

BrightNooblar10/9/2014, 12:36:09 AM1 votes

Depending on what view you are in a thread could appear to be a coherent talk between people, or a random mess of points and replies that do not connect to one another.

This is why its always important to quote the person you're responding to. It would be good if they would put the 'link to post' feature back into the quotes, but as long as the reader has read the thread, and the poster has quoted who they are responding to, everything should be clear in most cases.

Hyrum Graff10/9/2014, 7:26:40 PM1 votes

I think two changes will make the two views integrate well:

  1. When you reply to someone in Discussion view, it auto-quotes in chronological view.
  2. Remove the "reply to OP" box at the bottom of chronological view; instead, force people to click the "quote" button in order to reply.
  • [Current Functionality] When you use the quote button from chronological view, your post will display correctly in Discussion view.
  1. Two different types of quoting:
  • Quote whole post
  • Quote part of post (so you can respond to someone's post section-by-section
  1. When someone makes a reply in chronological view, auto-remove any full quotes, when you're viewing in discussion view (but keep the partial quotes)

I don't know if they're planning on making exactly these changes, but I know the boards team is working on quoting.