Some discussion about whether conferences should be "threaded" or "linear". Taken from the Caucus users' forum.

Given the numbering structure of Caucus items i.e., 3:24, 3:25, 3:26 would it be possible to insert a response to a response i.e., 3:24.1 and a response to that response 3:24.2 and so on. I feel this would provide a stronger sense of continuity or flow that mirrored real life conversation. You have probably looked at this before and know the pitfalls but I thought I would ask.

6:4) [Seen] 27-AUG-96 15:22 Charles Roth

Alas, that is not possible, Eric.

We are considering many of the suggestions that have been made about this. In 3.1 you will see, at least, better tools for navigating, linking, and starting new items -- so that each "thread" can have its own item, but with links between them.

6:5) [Seen] 27-AUG-96 16:24 Tom Mandel

In any case, Eric's suggestion -- in this unlike other cases -- is not so very good I think, as it would lead to excessive branching and separation of things.

The idea in creating knowledge in a conference is to provide more flexible ways for a user to deal with the information in the conversation. That's the direction we will continue to develop. Hard coding structure into the conversation itself is a stopgap and it limits the usefulness of the conference space. We want to keep the conference space integral and enrich the user's grasp on it. George Por has been thinking along these lines, here.

That said, Eric, keep on feeding ideas to us. Your contributions are great!

6:6) [Seen] 27-AUG-96 21:23 Roger Caldwell

One caution on threading and branching. We had some extensive discussion on this when we were evaluting caucus and others for purchase. For most users (not expert News followers), threading is confusing. The old conferencing system participate was this way too, each entry could have a branch off if it. You never knew where you were or where you were going.

Our old conf system was cosy. They had a feature many people here liked. The entries were all linear, just like caucus adds responses. But, you had a choice of two commands to make an entry - SAY would make a response (just like caucus) and COMMENT would link it to previous entry (you specify the number). When reading you had two choices, linear one after the other, or REFERENCE - jump from one entry to the next, which were linked by the COMMENT reference command. Then you could go back and read everything chronologically if you want. Thus, something as simple of just noting which earlier response you are resonding to, and making a new hot link to that response number so someone could immediately go back and read it, could be a poor persons version of threading.

Our bottom line was that we really like the concept of threading and see its need. But, it is too confusing even for experts the way it is normally implemented. There is a rich area here for improvement, and some of the stuff george por is talking about is good thinking. I am reminded of larry victor (in tucson) who made an entry somewhere in the caucus screeporch area when he was helping us evaluate products. He thinks the same direction as george. Neal Larson was an early one in this, with his "information annealing" - where you put stuff into a pot and massage it (like letting steel anneal) and then what you get is the product - little of everything put together but not like the orignial ingredients just pasted together. Charles also made a comment to us in some private discussion on this topic a while ago to watch our for systems that address threading by downloading a page at a time (this is how News does it); it conferencing this takes an enormous amount of time, as each response is an independent download. We certainly observed that problem as we reviewed conferencing programs (we selected caucus if that was not obvious to you all).

My impression is people want threading and as charles said earlier, they are seeing different visions through various filters on what that means. To implement too soon would be to complicate the other neat things that are so useful. But, not to study it further would be a mistake. This is a direction that is of great interest to many.

6:7) [Seen] 27-AUG-96 22:01 Lisa Kimball

One of the questions in my mind is about creating synergy between dialogue and information mapping. One of the advantages of the web is to create an incredible environment for hyperlinking along the lines of George's vision (we KNEW it was a good idea <grin> even if it was too early when we first attempted it, eh george?) An advantage of conferencing is the ability to keep bringing the group back together in the flow of conversation.

I sense that our needs are different when *creating* knowledge than when documenting knowledge or searching for knowledge. For me, "threading" in the sense usually associated newsgroup structures is much better suited for documenting and searching than for creating. It's also better suited for topics which lend themselves to particularization than for topics which are more holistic and dynamic.

We've been doing a lot of work with online learning communities and have found that associating web pages with conferences gives us a very powerful combination to meet both needs. We even sometimes archive maillists on the web pages for those parts of the process where a hierarchically structured database is the best tool. The pages can also contain archived conference discussions which can be inter/hyper linked in all kinds of useful ways. We're imagining a future caucus set up which automatically includes web pages associated with conferences which automatically pick up the conference access list for controlled access to the directories for those web pages.

Although it's unscientific research, I've sure had many years of experience using conferencing systems with all the different structures for a variety of groups and purposes. I am convinced that the learning groups and teams using systems without branching achieved deeper levels of reflection and relationship more quickly and more effectively than those with branching. I have a few theories about why that's true (which i should probably write a thesis about some day) but for purposes where developing relationship and esprit de group is central, non-branching works significantly better. That doesn't mean you can't DO it in a branching structure, it's just a lot harder.

So where i come out is that both types of structures are valuable and support different kinds of dynamics in the individual, group, and information dance ... and i would worry about cluttering up one structure with all the stuff it would need to also "be" the other structure. I might instead lean toward MAXIMIZING and highlighting the differences and finding ways to navigate easily between them.

6:8) [Seen] 27-AUG-96 23:16 Eric Nelson

Thanks for all your comments, this helps clarify the advantage of Caucus and maintaining the singular flow of a conversation. The comment made about keeping it simple in Caucus by refering to a previous comment by the reference number makes allot of sense or referring someone toa newly created thread if necessary. I appreciate your suggestions and value the experiencies you so freely share here.