Wondering About Threaded Discussion Possibilities

patsjv

This forum has been a huge help and has answered the great majority of my questions. Many thanks to Mark, the devleopers and all that contribute. What a great community!

I'm wondering if it's possible to set up Vanilla so that it would display discussion header summaries in a threaded view. The forum discussion I've helped manage has been very simple, and most users access it online via satellite-based dialup connections (http://www.micsem.org/cgi-local/forum_pub/index.cgi) from Micronesia. The current forum has the ability to list threaded summaries of all ongoing discussions, which has added to the simplicity of the forum and is a feature I'd like to consider keeping--if possible. (My programming skills are limited.) It's definitely time to change to Vanilla as we're getting mauled by spam, but I'm wondering, could threaded views be accomplished by way of a new theme? Or would there need to be substantial changes to the source code in order to do this?

I'd appreciate any thoughts or ideas. Thanks again.

patsjv

Any ideas on this?

ithcy

the thing is, there's no real nested structure to vanilla discussions.
you could consider the comments in a discussion to be nested all on one level underneath the discussion title, i suppose, but in vanilla you don't reply to particular comments, so there's no branching.

Krak

I've never liked nesting myself, more clicking. But its just like ithcy said.

patsjv

Thanks, guys.

Zethris

Has anyone come up with anything on this yet? I would really like to somehow have a threaded discussion like boardhost.com My forum visitors really like being able to follow discussions easily from the main page by just expanding the threads they want to follow and clicking refresh without having to click through topics to see if there were any updates. Any extension guru's who are familiar with the core out there have any pointers on where I might get started so I can make one for us?

TomTester

I understand you need it, just my $0.02

Threaded discussions are the #1 cause for N00B confusion... and a major time sink.

Comments/follow-ups are often posted at the wrong level, thus splitting the threads anyway.
Then people waste their time expanding on a thread at the top of the page that really
continues at the bottom... (not unlike replying to an email without reading the whole thing
first).

Zethris

Well I totally and completely disagree. Please see boardhost.com discussions and see how it works. It works because it's much more simple to use (by so called N00B's) and intuitive. Their success is based on simplicity as I thought vanilla was trying to also gain success through simplicity. They do not like the fat and bloated phpBB and the like forums. For the real "N00B" that uses the internet for a basic function, they don't automatically have the knowledge of knowing how to use it with all the buttons and things to read. My target audience is the babyboomer generation and part of the Gen-Xers. They were not born with the internet. Vanilla is almost there, almost can make boardhost useless. I just need threaded structuring.

Tiggr

Hi!

I just need threaded structuring.

I would like to have it too! Not as default view, but as option for powerusers.

I would help to build a plugin, but I don't know enought about Vanilla yet, to do it on my own!

Bye
Tiggr

TomTester

@Zet: Checked out boardhost. Indeed very simple (reminds me of state of the art in 1998: webconference board) but not for me.

It's a matter of preference I guess. I'm convinced any Gen-X-er that can understand a threaded
discussion can understand Vanilla's flat structure (and will not even miss it). Threading promotes
off-topic tangents and multi-topic discussions. This is much less common in flat discussions
(quickly become too long and then users to create a new topic).

PS The biggest boardhost flaw in my opinion is that posts exceeding 10 lines require users to
scroll down to get to the next message. Simple but very time-consuming to read a full
thread.

Tiggr

Hi!

Perhabs we should not discuss on the topic, if threads are good or bad? This is no holy quest for a threadfree world... ;-)

Shouldn't we discuss on how to make them available for user, they want it?

Tiggr

TomTester

Point take (but threads not in core please)
Vanilla Threading Extension = Great

Tiggr

In no case as a core feature, must be a extension.

I would kick threading without any thought about it, but my old forum had them, and some of my users are used to them!

But how to build such a extension?

Tiggr