Comments

[tiger_spot]

Why is it that when I post sad things or angry things or other whining, I get lots and lots of comments, but when I post happy things I get maybe one comment per post? This seems to be more or less the opposite of how I'm used to conversations working in meatspace (modulo the differences between a post-comment structure and a conversational structure).

Comments

[tiger-spot.livejournal.com]

the thread has sat dormant long enough that it seems dead and that nobody except the original poster and the person I'm replying to (if they've got comment-notification on) will see it, and that's sort of a sense of "the party has wandered away from here already"

Now see, that's exactly the cultural issue that makes LJ conversations harder. You don't expect anybody to read your comment. Nobody expects anybody to read comments on an old post, so they don't bother commenting, so there aren't any new comments to read, so no one expects there to be new comments to read, so they don't go check....

I think the branching may encourage conversation a little bit, but on the other hand without some way of marking things read, I think it's an active detriment

Absolutely. And it's not like LJ doesn't use cookies; they could implement some kind of datestamping easily.

Also, I think branching is helpful in places where the conversation is going off in several different directions, but things replying to blog posts tend to be focused on a specific topic, so there's not nearly as much need for it as on, say, Usenet.

[brooksmoses]

Now see, that's exactly the cultural issue that makes LJ conversations harder.

Yeah, indeed; that was sort of my point. At least with you I don't feel silly having a two-person conversation, though, and if someone else does join in, great.

On the cookies -- the problem is that you sort of need a datestamp for when you last read each set of replies, unless the system assumes that if you've read one you've read them all (which, while one may snarkily claim that's true for LJ drama-fests, is probably not a general rule that will keep people happy). And, if each LJ post is associated with its own set of replies, which it would pretty much have to be, then you end up with a cookie for each post that you read. And that probably quickly gets to be a startling lot of cookies.

[brooksmoses]

Addendum: The thing that particularly annoys me about LJ is how quickly threads die -- it seems like that, once a thread hasn't had posts for about 36 hours or so, it's unlikely that it will have any more ever, or at least not more than one or two.

Threads die on Usenet, too, but it usually takes at least a week, and a single post can often revive them.

[tiger-spot.livejournal.com]

The thing that particularly annoys me about LJ is how quickly threads die

Yeah. "Hey, there was a perfectly good conversation here; where'd everybody go?"

[brooksmoses]

Exactly. Whereas this has a definite sense of ... weren't we saying something about unexpectedly finding ourselves in a small room with nobody else around (oh noes!) recently?

[tiger-spot.livejournal.com]

And here I was going to go inform people who might have swung by early that conversation was happening....

[brooksmoses]

Hee. I wouldn't object; we've plenty of other options. And people and proper multi-person conversations are good too!

[little--one.livejournal.com]

I think part of that stems from people having huge friend lists, such that you can really only consistently read through things once. Going back and checking all those old posts for conversations after the initial swing past would be too time consuming, especially when there usually isn't much in the way of continuing conversation.

Really, it seems like if you want to hold extended conversations with someone or a group of people, LJ just isn't the right medium. There are plenty of other places on the internet that are better suited for ongoing discussion.

[tiger-spot.livejournal.com]

Going back and checking all those old posts for conversations after the initial swing past would be too time consuming

Heavens, yes, that'd be a waste of time. Most of what gets posted on LJ isn't something that's going to sprout a conversation anyway -- it's trip reports and how-my-day-was and whining and stuff. For the most part, I read posts because I care what that person has to say, but I don't care nearly as much what all their friends have to say in response. Even posts that commenters might have a lot to say about aren't necessarily going to spark those commenters to say anything I'm interested in. I just wish that for those topics I think my friends' friends have interesting things to say about, there were more support for that kind of interaction.

I make heavy use of the "track this" button when I see something I think might spark conversation; that way I can get involved if one happens without wasting a bunch of time reloading pages that haven't changed. It is a relatively new feature; maybe the culture will adapt over time so that more people keep an eye on posts with conversation potential, so that more of those potential conversations will actually happen.

There are plenty of other places on the internet that are better suited for ongoing discussion.

This is true, but they're not All About Me.

[brooksmoses]

What I seem to end up doing is opening a tab for all the posts that look likely to spawn interesting conversation, and then every so often going back through them and reloading them and reading whatever's new and closing them if they seem to have stagnated.

This is part of why the short timescale of conversations on LJ annoys me; I tend to go back and check things two or three days later, and often by then if there was any conversation I'd like to reply to, it's "too late".

On the other hand, the "track this" thingy that tiger_spot is suggesting doesn't work that well for me either, because I like being able to read the new comments in branch-related chunks rather than one-at-a-time, and with the tracking it seems that I keep reading them as they come in. (Maybe there's a better way to do that, though.)

...

Actually, perhaps the best way to do this, for me, is to use the feature that Mozilla apparently has to check pages to see if they've updated. (Though I don't know if that works with LJ well or not.) Shame that I don't actually like Mozilla very much.