Veritula – Meta

I agree this feature should be optional and toggleable but that doesn’t address its (potential) shortcomings. It just kinda hides them.

I’m saying it’s not clear to be how deeply nested comments would be shown.

If I’m understanding you correctly, you dislike having to scroll up and down in a discussion. You see empty space on the right and you think it should be filled. Hence your suggestion to put top-level ideas next to each other rather than on top of each other.

But then where do comments on each top-level idea go? Do they still go underneath? Nesting needs indentation. So that means deep nesting gets lots of indentation. So there’ll still be plenty of empty space.

Those are the kinds of things we’d need to figure out to have a mature design proposal ready for implementation.

Removed hyphenation

This may be too subjective, but I've always really disliked end-of-line hyphenation, of the kind currently used here. I find it pretty disruptive to the flow of reading, AND a source of visual clutter. That's a heavy cost for the supposed benefit of a justified margin, but we don't seem to be getting that benefit here either; the margin still appears jagged. A justified margin itself is unnecessary, if you ask me, but it can in any case be accomplished the other way, where small spaces are distributed between words in each line as needed. To me the latter method of the two is better for readability, no contest. I would advocate for the third/default method, here (jagged margin, no funny business), since justified margins seems needlessly formal.

Yeah, I'm not sure why I wrote this... I remember the option for number of criticisms now. I guess it slipped my mind.

Thanks, fixed.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but that’s how standing bounties work already.

When you fund a standing bounty, you set the number of criticisms you’re willing to pay for, and the amount for each.

If that’s something you want to do for your current bounty, you still can, before current funding runs out.

See also “How Do Bounties Work?”

The "Battle tested" badge should have a hyphen!
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/battle-tested

Bounties could pay out multiplicatively, up to a limit (e.g. 10$ per criticism, up to 3). This would preserve the incentive for bounty hunting after one criticism has already been posted.

Related to this or not, it could be useful to be able to set a bounty on a set of ideas, rather than just one. "Criticize any of these ideas for n$".

The main thread is ambiguous currently, by that reasoning: it's always gray. Having the whole thing red to indicate one or more pending criticisms below seems useful, and cool. And the offshoots from the main thread (the little curly part leading to each sub-idea) can have the new colors.

E.g.: User scrolls down the main bright red thread, past gray comment offshoots and dim red refuted criticism offshoots, until reaching the bright red pending criticisms offshoot that is the cause of the main thread being bright red. (!)

Currently, a single gray "thread" comes off an idea, and splits off into sub-ideas. A single criticism in the above scheme would turn the whole thread red, which is ambiguous.

And dimmer red for refuted criticisms, brighter red for pending ones! Default gray for comments.

The link could be put in a new tooltip, or something. Or kept as is, just without the yellow bubble, frankly.

It should be made not red. Gray. Arguable even without the red criticism line idea above, since it already conflicts with the "red = criticism" motif.

The quote

indentation bar

is red, which would cause visual confusion.

Is it handy? I have yet to want to open the criticized idea in a new tab. I have only ever wanted to scroll up to see it, which is slightly irksome with the current yellow bubble hashtag-matching method. And when the criticized idea is clearly immediately above, the yellow bubbles serve no real purpose, only add visual clutter.

The yellow bubbles link to the ideas they are criticizing, which can be handy.

Reiterating/refining #3904: I think the yellow "Criticism of" bubbles can and should be replaced by a graphical indication that is much easier on the eyes. The dropdown line can be made red if the comment it leads to is a criticism, and the bubble on the criticism can be eliminated. Reading the yellow bubble to get the idea # it is referring to, then searching the ideas above for the matching # is inelegant (even if it is usually the one right above).

Could be optional, as I said. Rearrange top-level ideas as toggled. Maybe not worth the trouble. Just spitballing. See #4825.

Not understanding this criticism. Maybe my idea is unclear. I'm picturing the existing "column" of a discussion, repeated column-wise for each top-level idea. Current discussion content takes up only the left ~third of my screen, while the right two thirds of my screen is totally unused. The cost of using that real estate is more content (clutter) on screen, the benefit is less time scrolling up and down in one dimension, looking for given ideas and getting bearings, which I sometimes find tiring. A second dimension helps get bearings (e.g. "Oh yeah, this relates to that one over here near the middle of the third column." Rather than: "That one was ... 77% of the way down the page, hmm, what were some words from it that I can use to ctrl+f, grrrrr.").

Thoughts on an optional "implies" relation for ideas? I find myself commenting on one idea something which it implies, then criticizing that, but the original idea is not marked criticized. Being able to chain or bundle ideas avoids the bookkeeping issue of having to make new criticisms for each step in the chain, if one is criticized.