Well, I wouldn't personally need this extension, but it would be quite cool.

My thoughts on the UI would be... have a reply button on comments (obviously) but this when clicked, through the magic of AJAX pulls a new reply box out from underneath the comment. This new reply box which slides out is your entry box to reply to a specific comment and will reinforce that this is the case. The comment box at the end will serve as replying to the thread as normal (or to the last comment?) or will not be there at all.

Perhaps after a few minutes of inactivity the reply box can hide itself (though this could be awkward if you go for a cup of tea), and if you click reply twice on two different comments, the first comment's reply box can hide itself.

I think that the threaded comments paradigm can be a little difficult to understand, but if you reinforce it with a "threaded" UI, then it might make more sense to the unwitting user.

My $0.02. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Adam.

Personally, I hate threaded discussions. The timeflow breaking up just irritates me as people tend to duplicate a lot of content due to not reading through the discussion. If they want to change the subject, create a new discussion.

Looks like you'd need a "Reply" button on each comment. Perhaps just add a new box next to the Whisper box with "Reply to comment number:". Clicking the reply link on a comment would auto fill this box and move the screen down to it.

Can you expand on that revised idea a little? I *think * I understand what you're saying, but perhaps a little mockup would make it completely clear?

So when writing a comment (which would be the same as now), you would put a comment number in an "Answer comment #:" text field? Or alternatively, click a link in the comment saying "Answer this question"?

Hi!

Experience is speaking through Stash's mouth! Interesting advice about duplicate content. This is like a cold shower for my motivation.

Oh no! Don't let you be stopped by that! I love threaded discussions. And can it be that bad? Usenet uses this sort of discussion all the time!

I'm realy sorry, there are no more threaded forums out there. Would be nice if vanilla could be on of the view "good" ones.

And no think about it with the power of ajax: you can just collapse away an offtopic branch of an discussion, if you don't like it!

bye
Tiggr (aka Marcus)

I have been designing and operating forums for 25 years, and it sometimes amazes me that people will still argue about threaded vs conversational (linear) modes. It's an argument as old as the message board itself. Let me toss in a few nickels.

Someone will always tell you they can't stand one style or the other. The simple fact is that they are BOTH valid, and like or dislike is usually reflective on the kinds of work someone does, or the nature of the discussion. Linear forums are preferred when a linear, conversational flow is appropriate. But when the subject is technical, or highly faceted, or with many expected opinions, or precise sequence counts, as in question and answer, such flow is completely inappropriate. If issue or question A is on page one, and answer A-1 comes in on page 20, it's not exactly conducive to finding answers or agreement, And nobody wants to wade through countless replies with no proximity to the context. If I am reading a post about apples, and it jumps to pumpkins, pears, and peaches, and want to reply about apples, only "quoting" almost the entire post will give the next reader any context, and you often have to plow through dozens -- or hundreds-- of such posts to come back to apples.

Contrast that with a few simple replies to apples, neatly indented under apples, and you can connect the dots and swiftly move on. It's even better when the thread can "collapse" (via javascript). To see the threaded style expressed as comment threads, just see sites like HuffingtonPost.com, DailyKos.com, or (more complexly) Slashdot.org. They work well-- and for huge threads.

In my experience, whenever a lot of people are discussing serious topics, linear boards like Vanilla quickly become so unworkable, people simply stop posting. But there is no rule. One topic might benefit from threading, and another from linear. If board designers would stop arguing about which is best, and just implement both (as phorum) does, the entire
issue would be resolved and people would not have to wonder how to implement them.

Many people feel the contention about this topic often comes down to age. Most younger users, they feel, prefer the linear style, perhaps because they are accustomed to the random, free-wheeling discussions on social networks. Older people may be more used to the earlier forums like The Well, Source, and early newsgroups, and they might be more comfortable with the formal, organizational structure of threading. Again, I just think it's context sensitive, and the topic owner or board operator should decide.

If Vanilla wanted to make this the most flexible, responsive, kick-ass board out there, they would let the board admin--and/or the thread starter--decide how the replies should be treated.

As for implementing threads, just look at a few popular boards that support threads (e.g..wwwthreads, Phorum, MobyThreads, NewBBS), and learn from their experience. Generally, you simply have a reply button on each post. That always creates a reply to THAT post. If the user wishes to reply to the "Parent thread," they use the "New Topic" button at the bottom or top of the list. If you want to be slick, you could have a pull down menu on the rely button, giving users a choice.

There are other refinements, such as thread summaries (hybrids) and other techniques. But what matters is the actual database tracking of the thread IDs, not the interface. If someone would simply implement the database scheme for the threading, you could explore a few interface ideas easily. There are several different ways threads can be expressed and acted on, but you can't do any of them without the basic architecture.

I have to build a very large site. I will not consider something not threaded. I'd love it if it could be Vanilla, as I like the rest of the product a lot (from what I've seen of it, thus far). So if any Vanilla coder wants to jump on this threading, I would put in prodigious amounts of time to help. Just don't ask me to code it :)

People interested in doing this should start with Tree-traversal algorithms
Read the following articles in sequence
Storing Hierarchical Data in a Database.Simple theory, PHP code and Mysql queries to make it all work. Examples include Adjacency List Model and Modified Preorder Tree Traversal
Managing Hierarchical Data in MySQL. Awesome simple explanation, with all MYsql query to get you a jump start. Examples include Adjacency List Model and Modified Preorder Tree Traversal

Once you have read both you will know what are the draw backs of both of these models and why Adjacency List Mode (used by wordpress for comment thread) is slow. Modified Preorder Tree Traversal is better, Fetching a tree is simple and really fast but editing a tree requires the whole tree to be edited making editing costly. Perfect for a Subcategory extension, where you will create a tree once and hardly every change it. There is a NSTREES library to do preorder tree traversal. Another problem with PreOrder tree traversal is that you have to LOCK the table when you are making edits.

I still have to read up this page.
Working with Graphs in MySQL
Combining edge list and "nested sets" algorithms provides a clean solution.

Well I changed my mind, I'm gonna use Adjacency List Model.
I fact I gonna load a kind of php array with parent references for comments with one big query. Data to display (Author, Dates, maybe a little Preview...) are collected at the same time.
Since there should be usually less than 200 comments in a discussion, I think that making php handle this array with a recursive function shouldn't be too heavy.
Well, we'll see...

EDIT: and of course if saves some coding when storing a new comment in the db

Hi, I've got a working thing now. Many delegates are needed, see at the top of the default.php file. This is a link to the alpha-release.
Tunnel, I don't know if you're still there but I need some testers.
Sorry, there is no fancy ajaxy stuff. It's quite raw but it seems to work.
Now good night and thanks for all advice given here!

Great news!
My addon currently doesn't allow user-based choice, choice is only left to the creator of the discussion.
Known issues: pagination: clicking a link in the index or a search page can lead to weird pages...

so without any debugging just reporting what happened on a clean install with only Noether extension:

After enabling the extension and going to Vanilla's index.php I got:
Notice: Undefined index: NoetherThreaded in /var/www/vanilla-threads/library/Framework/Framework.Class.SqlBuilder.php on line 129

and also:
Error Message
  An error occurred while retrieving discussions.
Affected Elements
  DiscussionManager.GetDiscussionList();
The error occurred on or near: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'as Threaded from LUM_Discussion t left join LUM_User u on t.AuthUserID = u.UserI' at line 1

It works again if you reload page, but I guess something wasn't installed successfully :)

When starting new threaded discussion:

Notice: Undefined property: Context::$TimeKeeper in /var/www/vanilla-threads/extensions/Noether/comments.php on line 48

Fatal error: Call to a member function AddMarker() on a non-object in /var/www/vanilla-threads/extensions/Noether/comments.php on line 48

great, now it works fine

I would suggest to add window.location('#Form'); at the end of SelectParent() function in Noether.js, it would cause to jump to the form after clicking on reply link.
Looks nice so far. Going to lunch now :)