Comment by ALittleLight | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ALittleLight | Hacker News Reader

I picked a conversation at random

https://taaalk.co/t/bitcoin-maxima-other-crypto-things

This started off with a question about a background image, and the answer had a lot of detail opening up many threads of possible conversations. This seems like something that happens pretty regularly, but also something that the format of linear text isn't well suited for. This is a problem for both essays and conversations.

There's a moment with a dozen possible interesting branches and the author or authors choose one direction to pursue. The other directions may be addressed later or may be forgotten and not picked up again.

I'm trying to imagine some branching structure, and how it might look in a UI that would "open" multiple threads and let readers and writers move through the text in their own direction.

Does that sound meaningful or possible to anyone else?

This immediately made me think of the C2 Wiki. It has a style similar to Taaalk in the sense that entries are often a mix of conversation and "exposition". It allows for that sort of linking by being a ("the") wiki. Perhaps that's a good model? A wiki where authors are visually marked as on Taaalk but otherwise all the accouterments of a wiki.

The not-quite-vaporware C2 followup implements some aspect of what you're describing via a sort of columnar layout.

Sounds like Reddit or HN comment sections. Both form trees of comments, some of which end up becoming long chains.

The problem with comment chains is that they aren't focused on a specific point. Like essays or conversations they just cover many points in the order the authors want them to.

There is also not a way to pursue a single idea down a comment chain. The idea is merged in with everything else the comment is about and not really followed consistently.

Suppose I write an interesting essay about five central ideas. What I'm looking for a way to separate those ideas and allow the user to follow any one of them to some conclusion without having to read the explanations for all five.

Or, alternatively, if an idea gets lost or we simply don't want to discuss it, we could flag this idea as something that needs further work by other community members, who could come along and improve it.

Sounds like Branch (2012-2014(?))

Do you have a link? "Branch" is turning up a lot of unrelated results on Google.

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