Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: dale_laroy who wrote (135957)	5/23/2001 1:37:57 PM
From: tcmay	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Re: Political debate in the Intel thread Dale writes: "In general, I have to agree with this. It would be nice if the monitors could shunt political subthreads to their own independent thread. At times I like to read the political postings, but wish there were some way to identify them as such before accessing them." I'm leery of "monitors" (who are they? I see no signs they are here) deciding where articles should go. Clearly shunting an article into a thread that is not being read by others is the same as simply killing it completely. The problem lies with the lack of tools for subthreading by the users. "Recently, I have found that the best way to separate the wheat from the chaff is to find a posting with a promising entry line then, upon verifying it is a worthwhile topic, follow it back to the root and from their forward through the responses." I've done this as well. The problem is a tree problem: Following a thread back from Alice to Bob to Charles to Dave to Edward and then reading _forwards_ only catches the Edward-Dave-Charles-Bob-Alice branch of the tree, but misses the Edward-Dorenda-Cindy branch and the Edward-Dave-Charles-Bill branch, etc. The problem is a lack of true threading tools. In several other fora I'm in, even Web-based fora, there are tools for expanding and collapsing messages in a particular thread (subthread in the context of mega-threads like "Intel"), outine style. I had these tools in 1988 with "trn" (threaded news reader) and then with "tin" and "Newswatcher" and "Thoth" and all of my other threaded news readers. I hope someone at SI is doing development on better tools. What exist here are nothing more than at the level of IRC Chat tools. --Tim May