Dom Alhambra

Online discussions have been condensed into SMS-like chat groups like Discord, WeChat, Telegram, Slack, etc. The real-time, SMS-derived chat interface is not conducive to multi-paragraph explanations or discussions. This is because of two factors: formatting and psychological context (or, “mindset”).

Formatting and Interface

The SMS-like chat group application makes a multi-sentence or multi-paragraph piece of text into something overwhelming. You look like you’re ranting at someone if you tried using iMessage to send a 1000-word response to someone.

I had to start relying on Telegram to send my long responses to friends via PDF documents. And if you know me, almost every response is long.

I follow Telegram channels that use one message for a slew of information. The way chat bubbles look and work, condensed to one side of the chat interface and unfriendly to sentence-by-sentence parsing, I am overwhelmed by a multi-paragraph chat app.

The search interface for most chat apps is atrocious, if it exists, making a search for a particular document or phrase a laborious process.

SMS-like chat apps, encourage Twitter-like responses, which is not conducive to a longer, more sustained discussion on one topic.

Psychological Context

The interface already confines thought and writing, but the psychological context of SMS-like apps makes the situation only worse. On mobile and with most mobile interfaces, you are in the mode of being short and economical with what you say. This is the success of SMS-like apps, for those people who are just passing the time to scan through small messages, without much thought placed into responses.

However, I know that there are people that have mobile-first lifestyles that are willing to engage in longer, sustained conversations with people. I know this because Reddit has been a great hybrid between Twitter-level responses and sustained, in-depth discussions that are inherent in general purpose online discussion boards. There is potential to unlock sustained thought and discussions on a mobile-first platform.

Why not just Reddit?

Hierarchical versus egalitarian interfaces

Reddit hits about 80% of the objective to foster sustained conversations, and deserves its current reign over modern discussion boards. However, I do not believe that Reddit is the only direction for long-form discussion. 

The hierarchical, branching structure of comments works really well for divergent conversations, but you can observe how conversations tend die out after 2 or 3 levels in. This might occur because of a couple factors: 1) There are slight incentives to stay on the first level of discussion because you have the most potential for upvotes and engagement, 2) On mobile, collapsing and expanding level 4 or 5 comments is a chore.

This is why the more traditional, egalitarian discussion board posts can benefit sustained conversation: Every comment receives equal access to real estate, even if divergent branches go deep. Thoughts, once buried by Reddit’s interface, is always kept at surface.

Reddit incentivizes re-posts

The rising want of upvotes and awards encourages people to recycle old content as new, thus receiving diminishing rewards for “contributions”. Furthermore, Reddit’s algorithms for default sorts like “Best” and “Top” take into account age, thus hiding older and useful content from new users and necessitating re-posts. It is a discussion board with very little cultural memory except for the transitory memes and symbols that tie people together.

The traditional online discussion board is typically composed of posts that are sorted by “Last Modified”. New posts submitted to the topic “bump” the topic back to the top of the discussion board. This is a cornerstone for discussion boards like Head-Fi.org, where headphone models might last for years, and a single topic suffices for all those years of discussion for that particular headphone. This serves as a very useful tool for viewing the history and sentiments for a certain topic.

Reddit relies on sticky posts for canonical content

“Canonical content” is that type of content that people hate having to repeat whenever someone new joins into the discussion. They are the premises and pieces of information that build the collective memory of a discussion group over the months or years.

For example, on the subject of headphones, ten different submissions might ask “what are the best headphones under $200?”. Rather than reinventing the wheel, seasoned members would refer these people to some “canonical content”, such as a very reputable list of best headphones under $200 submitted several years ago. With forum members remembering and reintroducing canonical content from the past, the new member can build from there and start adding their own original content.

Reddit encourages two stacked posts and a “sidebar” (which is not typically seen on mobile) to condense years of canonical content into just a few places. Unfortunately, because of the incentive systems built by Reddit, stickied posts can easily be hidden and ignored. For Reddit, there are more benefits to simply asking the question and answering from scratch, because upvotes and awards are applied to everything new. For Reddit, old content is discouraged from extensive (re-)use except for the most dedicated power users.

The traditional online discussion board has little differentiation between new and old content, because old content can help supplement the new, and vice-versa. In the age of Twitter and Reddit and Facebook, we can see that there is a general consensus to discourage the (re-)use of the past for present topics.