Welcome to DiscDAG

This project is called DiscDAG, and the description says you can reply to multiple threads all at once. Too bad the example image only shows branching and not merging. It hides the key differentiator of the system.

If you only happen to allow branching but not merging, then the result can be represented in a tree. Indeed, this is how Hacker News, Reddit, Slashdot, and mailing lists visually present their threaded discussions.

Also note that email has a header named "References" which can point to multiple email message IDs, so there is some existing infrastructure that can express a DAG. Too bad no email clients use it this way; every client I've seen will visually attach each email message to zero or one parent.

It has some good aspects as the ability to branch allow to focus on some specific details more easily.

This particular solution seems to be lacking some mechanism to merge the discussion back together so that the tree doesn't branch out ad infinitum.

It also doesn't solve the problem of collaborative list building easily.

It's also simplifying the problem as it is not a asynchronous system but rather a standard single point of truth database.

The way I see all these collaborative tools is that they are trying to make up for their users lack of basic algorithmic knowledge. They are constraining the users into a specific point of view. But this is usually not enough because the user will want to do something which isn't done easily in this framework and new absurd phenomenons similar to top posting will emerge.

Database tools and basic algorithmic structures have been known for a long time now. The usual structures needed are lists, queues, sets, graphs, tags, custom structs. Standard database tools can do the collaborative part easily, you just need a good front-end to make them available to your users for when he needs them.

The alternative if you can't teach your user, is to have a nlp AI construct the database automatically. That's what there is in tools like gmail to automatically add to your agenda your flight reservations for example.

This looks/feels an awful lot like Google Wave did 10 years ago. At least conceptually.

Email could work like this. Threading emails in a chronological list is just a trend in clients. There’s no reason clients couldn’t do it like this, or display emails like IM software threaded by author and sorted by last message (I’ve been searching my entire life for an email client to thread IM-style).

I like what this explores but it certainly seems to favor semi-continuous threads of conversation rather than thousands of disparate discussions that you'd normally have on social media. Getting a graph with a friendly-UX for the latter would be quite difficult to achieve.

While the diagnosis is obviously correct, this proposed cure will never take except with OCD-ridden hair splitters (and there it won't be necessary). Why? Because people would have to burn a glucose molecule for activating a brain cell. That will never happen.

Somewhat related: this is how the mysterious texts in The Outer Wilds are all written. They're arcs with many branching threads.

Most normal folks have a hard time understanding the concept of linear email threads.

And DiscDAG things DAGs are the cure?

Deluded is the word that springs to mind.

It will get too wide, that's why HN and Reddit do it like they do.

Amazing Idea！