Flat discussions can be implemented without much extra thought, just the comments below eachother and you're done, and it'll work as well as the next flat comment system.
Threaded discussions require a bit more thought. If you just make a basic "reply-to" tree style discussion, you get something unwieldy quick. It can work, if you happen to catch the right community, but it'll be fragile.
So you need clever things like voting, sorting and collapsing/pruning.
Now for some reason, the article's first example was HN, which gets almost all of these things quite wrong. The voting/sorting algorithm makes threads stagnant and rigid (top voted comment will stay on top, even if it's off-topic) and there is no collapsing/pruning going on whatsoever.
His other example is his own site that he says is not a discussion platform.
And then there's Reddit, which he passingly mentions. I know HN doesn't like Reddit much, and whatever you may dislike the community but there is one thing: Not only is it one of the largest discussion sites on the web, it is one of the very few sites that get threaded discussion really right. Comments are collapsible and do so automatically at smart places, but the interface to expand/collapse them yourself is responsive enough to be pleasant to navigate. The sorting algo almost always gets it right, and (especially for top-level comments) I hardly see an interesting comment buried to obscurity by a most top-voted one (something that happens on HN threads all the time).
Well. I didn't really intend for this post to come off as so much critique on HN's discussion system. But if you're talking about flat vs threaded discussions, then HN just isn't a very important example. Also not for "why threaded doesn't work" (not with all the other low-hanging fruit).
So yeah, if you just want quick comments/discussion, go flat. But threaded can be done right. Especially if you want to stimulate "discussion" vs "comments". But it's not set-and-forget, you need to tweak it for the community, and the style of discussion. Flat is easier. Or maybe I should say it's easier to do threaded wrong :)
Threaded discussions require a bit more thought. If you just make a basic "reply-to" tree style discussion, you get something unwieldy quick. It can work, if you happen to catch the right community, but it'll be fragile.
So you need clever things like voting, sorting and collapsing/pruning.
Now for some reason, the article's first example was HN, which gets almost all of these things quite wrong. The voting/sorting algorithm makes threads stagnant and rigid (top voted comment will stay on top, even if it's off-topic) and there is no collapsing/pruning going on whatsoever.
His other example is his own site that he says is not a discussion platform.
And then there's Reddit, which he passingly mentions. I know HN doesn't like Reddit much, and whatever you may dislike the community but there is one thing: Not only is it one of the largest discussion sites on the web, it is one of the very few sites that get threaded discussion really right. Comments are collapsible and do so automatically at smart places, but the interface to expand/collapse them yourself is responsive enough to be pleasant to navigate. The sorting algo almost always gets it right, and (especially for top-level comments) I hardly see an interesting comment buried to obscurity by a most top-voted one (something that happens on HN threads all the time).
Well. I didn't really intend for this post to come off as so much critique on HN's discussion system. But if you're talking about flat vs threaded discussions, then HN just isn't a very important example. Also not for "why threaded doesn't work" (not with all the other low-hanging fruit).
So yeah, if you just want quick comments/discussion, go flat. But threaded can be done right. Especially if you want to stimulate "discussion" vs "comments". But it's not set-and-forget, you need to tweak it for the community, and the style of discussion. Flat is easier. Or maybe I should say it's easier to do threaded wrong :)