The space for great discussions is nearly limitless in the digital world. The internet is connected to most people thus those people can get together and discuss.
Online discussions are easily derailed though, more so than in person. Since people feel little shame in speaking things that have nothing to do with the discussion taking place. And human nature being what it is, someone always engages with the off topic people and, BAM, the online discussion about birds is now about Trump.
You can say “don’t touch the poop!” but someone always touches the poop.
There is no way to easily get the train back on the tracks. The linear commenting systems of the internet follow the derailed comments before the comments that are on topic can be seen. A single idiot in a discussion, and there is always one, ruins the party.
Nested comments are a disaster for good conversations. They lead the mind away from thinking to reacting and good times turn to rising blood pressure. The eyes follow the nested comments because that is what comes next. After two or three layers of nested comments is difficult to tell what is even going on. Who is talking to who? Oh just follow the fifteen lines leading up to other comments and look!
This is bad design.
Reddit has tried to get around this by making you click to see the nested comments but that doesn’t help a lot. Now you have a conversation within a conversation and a comments become more like Tweets and not a place to discus the article. Responding back and forth is fruitless for the people who want to know what is happening.
Are there great comments in the “more replies” dropdown? You got to go look and take that chance.
Since the Reddit style linear comment sections have to be monitored the subReddits become fiefdoms of the worse kind. There becomes a set ideology to a subReddit and discussions end. The system can’t handle genuine debate and disagreement.
And Reddit is awful so there is that.
A better way for discussion and reading of discussion is what I call a graph conversation, a conversation that builds a graph.
As the conversation grows and nodes and edges track the conversation. That way offhand comments still have their place as they can genuinely add to the enjoyment of a conversation since the off handed comment can no longer derail it. Humor and tidbits and anecdotes add color since there is no harm in them.
The conversation can branch off in different directions and go endlessly. Since the conversation isn’t around a fleeting post, graph conversations can be visited over and over again and keep growing. They aren’t lost in 15 minutes to the algorithm dungeon.
Take a look at the video below to see what I mean
Graph Conversation
To take part or start your own check out Graphvo. You can just lurk or signup and comment yourself.
Grapho is a social conversation platform where you can make the best argument you can and see the best arguments from others.