Let's Get Rid Of Some Confusion

[Taeme]

In a threaded forum, one can follow the flow of ideas.

It also increases the number of posts people make, dividing up their responses to the various sub-topics and responding to opinions, or you end up with replies to one topic within another sub-thread.

Saying threaded forums are some how innately more intelligent is a charming line of reasoning. I, however, would state that threaded forums get people away from the idea of posting on a message board and more towards having private little conversations, and going off topic. With linear forums topics always revert back to the original at hand, and people are not encouraged to use the message board as a public IM service.

But unless I read all the replies, I don't know if a given reply is to BigIdiot or InterestingPoster.

So replying to a bad poster immediately destroys whether or not someone reply is worth reading? In threaded forums, time and time again I've seen a BigIdiot break into a sub-topic and then draw all attention away from the other replies in that sub-thread with his big loud mouth. Again, it works both ways.

Threaded fora are more useful for deep discussions where branches in the thinking can and do take place. Non-threaded fora are more useful for "I think LotR ROXX" type threads.

The threads are made by the people who post in them. Saying the intelligence is a matter of the forum style is, like I said, a charming line of reasoning.

But, already, the question of "what is that in reply to?" has come up a few times.

That's just a matter of replying with quotes or in proper form, rather than dumping an uncomplete fragment
onto the table. That happens in either form because of the dual forms, though I imagine using the reply button works even if you're not using threaded view (let's find out). And it still happened before, there's always people who don't understand threaded view anyways.

Like I said, charming bit of reasoning there, Pete.