Threaded Discussions - Why?

Why do ThreadedDiscussions as a feature of a wiki? That seems to go somewhat against the grain of the original wiki ideas. Is this a case of CreepingFeaturitis? ThreadedDiscussions happen spontaneously, without any formalizations imposed by the system. I understand the impulse to formalize since it would give the wiki maintainer some control over content, but is that a good idea? (Looking at the WikiOnWiki discussions at the original WikiWikiWeb might make one think so, or at least lead to ThreadDread, but I'm still not convinced.)

-- KevinKinnell - 10 Apr 2000

This is a good example of how most threaded discussions don't work. This text should have been at the bottom of ThreadedDiscussions page, but was instead put into its own page.

Matter of opinion. There is a link at the bottom of that page pointing here, but this exists because in my opinion it deserved its own thread. -- KevinKinnell - 10 Apr 2000

Where I work we have a commercial system something like a wiki that has an implementation of threaded discussions. We find this feature somewhat frustrating because there is a single page that shows the titles of all the messages in the thread, but then reading any message requires that you lose the context since only that message is shown in the window. It's sort of like net news or email where nobody has included any part of the previous message.

It's a lot like having this topic on its own page even though it belongs on the page referenced. One has to hop back and forth between the two pages (or more for a long thread) to pick up all the context.

I really like the TWiki way because you only have to scroll a little bit to see the context of the message as a thread grows. People can free to even go into a previous comment and mix their comments in with text that is already there (as long as people on a particular wiki web agree on a way to represent this).

-- JohnAltstadt - 10 Apr 2000

A agree with John, having one page per thread is easier to use, because it eliminates the need to follow links to see related messages. That's why Wiki systems are more userfriendly then web based discussion systems that spread a thread over many pages.

-- PeterThoeny - 13 Apr 2000

Probably the main point is that topics are not very structured ... do you thing the introduction of some automatic tool to index the internal structure of a topic would help?

Have a look at SectionTitles ...

-- AndreaSterbini - 24 Aug 2000

OK, I'll jump in despite the age of this thread.

This is a fascinating topic. I think there MIGHT be a place for threaded discussions since little threads do happen all over as demonstrated here. Topics that grow too large to help keep it all around and the deleting of old info is frowned upon or simply overlooked by most people since it's actively destroying others work.

CaucusVsTWiki might shed some light on this. I'll express ideas there before continuing here.

-- GrantBow - 21 Jan 2003