#read moar

[23:33] somni: trees with clarity sometime?

[23:33] somni: the textrees

[23:34] Nathan: Yesss

[23:36] somni: it seems like lots of people want to speak in trees but no one is sure how to

also i want to speak treely

hm

[23:37] Nathan: Hmmmmmmm

[23:38] Nathan: So I think what you want is less a tree.... and more a graph? of sorts

[23:38] Nathan: I think it would be useful to be able to like...

[23:39] Nathan: Okay so Alice makes a post, Bob Carol and Dan all reply to Alice's post but not to each other, Emily comes along and wants to make a reply that's directly in response to both Alice and Carol

[23:40] somni: mhm!

[23:41] somni: yes! i think i was worried people wouldnt be interested in this

[23:41] somni: 4chan does this

[23:43] somni: hmmmm i think it might be nice to have replies sequential by default with the option to swipe sideways?

so if alice says 'hello there are two conversations going on here' then bob or carol can branch their replies sideways

[23:43] Nathan: I am ambiguously people and definitely interested

[23:44] Nathan: So what I'd do here

[23:44] somni: i am definitely  interested i think it is possible to do without having things be too complex

[23:44] somni:

[23:46] Nathan: is I'd have a button on a post that says 'reply' and when you hit that, you go into [compose box] and it says 'replying to [name]'s post "[first ten characters]..."' and you click that and have the option to check all the little boxes you want for 'which posts in this graph are you replying to'

[23:46] Nathan: or if you don't want to do that you just leave it alone

[23:47] somni: hmm so you click on each post's reply button?

[23:48] Nathan: like 'by default you are replying to one post, if you hit this button you can then hit buttons for more posts and be replying to all of them'

[23:49] somni: (oh! an alt view of the graph could be nested channels! hm somehow)

[23:49] somni: it would be nice to have a [change mode] menu so you could view the graph in several ways

[23:49] somni: like a brainstorm thing

[23:50] somni: hmmmm but then you have to index all the posts in the textbox reply thing and give them each a button?

[23:51] somni: why do humans want to reply to several posts?

because several people are doing kind of the same thing and they have a response for all of them

[23:52] somni: ..........pacing is a thing

it would be nice if things were as fast as irc or discord and not slow like reddit

[23:52] somni: hmmmmmm a lot of graph-y things seem to slow down

[23:52] Nathan: Like you know how there's a button on discord where you can show a reblog graph?

[23:52] somni: yeah!

[23:53] Nathan: Something that displays similarly to that might work

[23:53] somni: and if you hover over a thing you can see snippets of text

[23:53] Nathan: OH you know what else looks right? that polyamory graph thing

[23:54] somni: !!!!!! the one with the spring physics interface?

[23:54] Nathan: Yeah!!

[23:54] somni: that is nice

[23:55] somni: hm how would you represent a graph as nested folders

[23:57] somni: i guess you could have an expanded linear view where things look like 4chan and a condensed linear view where you swipe left to get to the next branch of the first branching node above the post you are swiping left on

[23:57] somni: and also reddit threadview?

[23:57] somni: oooh everyone should be able to give the trees their own nicknames too

[23:57] somni: to make things less confusing if a confusing name is chosen by the maker of the tree

1 May 2018

[00:00] somni: also it would be cool to have an information overload version where you look at everysingle new reply to things in parallel

[00:00] somni: https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/mspaintadventures/images/4/43/Complete_Bullshit.gif/revision/latest?cb=20180322211926

[00:09] somni: i think the MAIN one will be the swiping left one

[00:10] somni: oooooh what if its like the google play store and people can make their own userinterfaces and use them???????

[00:11] somni: for too long have people laboured under the chains of not being able to change what their user interface looks like from their end or modify nicknames of their friends or give nicknames to channels!!!!!

[00:11] somni: being able to give nicknames to channels would skim some stuff off of the dabate about channel names

[00:12] somni: um you would have to have some convergence if you are talking about them with other people

[00:12] somni: oooh

[00:12] Nathan: omg

[00:14] somni: what if when alice nicknames #politics to #arguing and then talks to bob (who nicknames it #agora) and says 'this conversation is going on in #arguing' bob sees 'this conversation is going on in #agora'??

[00:15] Nathan: YES

[00:15] Nathan: channel ID numbers, server-side

[00:15] Nathan: nicknames, client-side

[00:16] Nathan: 'set default nickname' for inputting a name when creating a thread

[00:18] somni: ooh and line-segments of posts should be able to be hyperlinked to too! like a use-mention distinction

(replying to a set of posts is use and linking to them is mention)

and linking to them makes the line-segement you are linking to glow gold (or another colour) and centers your linear view on the first post in the line-segment

[00:19] somni: hmmm do threads have names?

ooh i think line-segments or [line-segments with all descendents of the last node] should be able to be given nicknames and put in a folder

[00:20] somni: so you can come back to them or get alerts on them?

[00:20] somni: hmmm alerts might be ouch after a while, but muting things would be an option

[00:21] somni: so likeee you take clippings of the graph and make those a kind of channel if you want and you can name the clipping and also save it in a client-side folder system

[00:23] somni: ooohhh and if there is a line-segment/tread(?) you want to reply to later you can take a clipping of it and put it in a folder in the sidebar to respond to later or see if people replied

[00:24] Nathan: hee

[00:24] Nathan: this sounds extremely complicated I love it

[00:25] somni: okay! how to do alerts? hmm maybe @-ing people is good?

people can get alerts on their clippings or mute them

[00:25] somni: the folder system for threads is like channels and in the sidebar

[00:27] Nathan: Hmmmm, yeah, collapsible folders will be a needed thing

[00:29] somni: on the sidebar there would be like the public universe of graphs and then below that the folders of threads that you make

[00:30] somni: and you could maybe have an optional bot that puts threads into an archive folder after a bit of time (but remembers their original folders so you can revert it)

this could help things from being a mess

and also you could have threads that you pin to folders and are not swept by the bot

[00:32] somni: !!!!! >public

this reminds me, people could set their reply to a post to only be viewable to certain people and all replies are only viewable by these people

or they gain mod powers over the descendents of a thread

and its noted on their post and all descendents who is modding the thread(edited)

[00:33] somni: that way you can get discussions with different moderators on the same graph

hmm

[00:36] somni: and people can mute users or threads and descendents of threads and have their posts be collapsed into [posts blocked] nodes

[00:37] somni: i think the hyperlink thing would be really good for having longer discussions and not forgetting things that much

[00:39] somni: umm like if a thread made a good point everyone could link to it instead of repeating things, wikilike

ooh you could have a copy/paste option for threads in your sidebar that allows you to link to them

[00:46] somni: extra-special bonus feature: you can export threads to wikis and it take everything (unless it is a thread under different mods in which case the mods need to approve) in the thread and everything they link to and everything that stuff links to and uploads it to a wiki for lots of people to peruse

[00:48] somni: --

ooh and an option to have tabbed threads!!

[00:48] somni: or horizontally parallel threads

[00:50] Nathan: .......gdi

[00:51] Nathan: I want to talk more about this but also I have therapy tomorrow so I need to like... actually sleep at all before then

[00:51] somni: nodnod

[00:51] somni: .........maybe your therapist would have some ideas about this

[00:52] somni: okay yes

[01:03] somni: hm i guess with threads replacing channels your nickname for a thread would link to a threadset and display as a your nickname to other people unless other people gave it another nickname (less certain on this)

[01:05] somni: ooh and getting snippets/line segments and storing them on the touch screen could be easy if you go into brainstorm view and draw a line across the graph and then lift up your finger and it gives you a prompt to label the thread and after its labeled it [less certain] goes in a default folder and can be afterwards resorted[less certain]

[01:09] somni: hmmm, or you could have a popup that allows you to give it names and tags (seperated by commas) and the tags sort the threads like folders?

tags seem to be better than folders (and kind of replacing them?) because sometimes a thread is relevant to more than one folder?

[01:10] somni: oooh and definitely all the nicknames and tags and threads and graphs and stuff can be colour-coded client-side too

[01:13] somni: -- also a rectalinear graph format like for family trees

also a twitter-like format where all the latest threads are stacked

[01:15] somni: --

[01:16] somni: hm how to format/display posts that are replies to multiple previous posts in linear format?

[01:20] somni: oh and when you change threads you can create a clickable link that takes you right where the node you branch off of is and put a link on your post below the node that takes you to where the end of the conversation happened

[01:20] somni: (this is just the hyperlinks!)

[01:21] somni: okay and when a post gets deleted, i gets replaced with a post that reads [deleted] but retains its connections

[01:22] Nathan: Nodnod

[01:23] Nathan: Um right sleeping >.>

[01:23] Nathan: Zzzzzzzzz

[01:23] somni: *switches off the lights*

[01:24] Nathan: what about edits do we want edit history like facebook has or edits with a label that just says it's been edited or

[01:24] Nathan: Um zzzzzzzzzzzz >.>

[01:24] somni: (hm and you can release your mod-powers from affecting a sub-graph, but once there are no more mods, no one can retroactively claim mod powers)

[01:26] somni: i like the discord edit system but edit history could be nice. OOH! for longer time-scale things/ slower rate you could have a bunch of editors for one post

[01:30] somni: ooh and also the giving people mod powers over graphs within a universe would be cool for collaborative blogs and stuff

[01:32] somni: and people can do the hyperlink join to create a seed of a new graph; but probably it would be a pain to allow people to copy/paste threads and continue them elsewhere? um what is the point of that? they can just start another node in response, declare mod powers and block people who they dont want to interact with

[01:37] somni: ooh another super special awesome export feature: exporting threads or graphs or subgraphs to textfiles

with threaded notation or something like 4chan reply things

[01:39] somni: another cool think would be to have a splitscreen, one with a brainstorm graph view and one with a linear view

and clicking different parts on the graph view gives you different parts of the linear view

[01:40] somni: and selecting a thread by drawing on the graph puts textcode in the textbox that hyperlinks to the thread (kind of like how links to names work in discord) and can give a prompt for a name and tags

[01:41] somni: (maybe that might be too much mental pressure to have the popup show every time)

[01:41] somni: im thinking that its about as intrusive as discord's autocomplete for names

[01:45] somni: (if you don't give it tags or give it the null tag, it doesn't enter your sidebar of threads)

[01:46] somni: (maybe having the tag and name choices come up each time you want to hyperlink to a section isn't the best)

[01:48] somni: --

OH YEAH METADATA CIRCLES

[01:49] somni: you can opt in to seeing whatever metadata you want on posts

[01:51] somni: like hearts, emotions reacts, up votes down votes, probability estimates, embedded buttons that let you donate money to the poster, tags

[01:52] somni: and then you can subscribe to metadata groups and see like all the ways a group of people up vote or downvote a thing and the people in the metadata ring decide who has membership in the ring

[01:55] somni: and then you can search, order, and filter posts by metadata from rings you subscribe to

[01:56] somni: !! like there could be a ring that tags posts with trigger warnings

[01:58] somni: so if you want to avoid posts with a certain kind of content, you subscribe to a metadata ring that tags for that kind of content and then block posts that have the tags you want to avoid

[01:59] somni: and if one group is bad at tagging for the thing you want to avoid, you can switch to subscribing to another ring or to two metadata rings at once and block posts when either tag it with your trigger!

[02:01] somni: and the metadata plug-ins dont come with the chat program but can be downloaded as plug-ins and anyone can upload a meta-data plug in

and you dont see the metadata unless you have the plug in and have the particular meta-data toggled to visible

[02:02] somni: OH! and bots can be members of meta-data rings

[02:03] somni: -- i expect rings to follow the power law where there is a big ring that lots of people are in and lots of people subscribe to by default and then there is a long tail of more niche rings

[02:06] somni: -- and metadata can be stuff like how much money taggers (as distinct from subscribers) in a given ring tip to a given post (and you can sort by tip amount OMG eeeeeeeeeee)

and it can be stuff like displaying how many child nodes a post has

[02:08] somni: (um which i guess is a little different because no rings, maybe really deterministic plug-ins like this can have a no-rings option or maybe just let people ignore (or not if they are interesting to them) any human rings that form)

[02:08] somni: also emoji reacts on discord and slack is an example of post metadata

[02:09] somni: hmmm maybe have an option such that you can set your metadata to public and people can form their own rings out of their friends with public metadata

[02:10] somni: [this feels like minutia] {okay but its exciting!!!!!}

[02:11] somni: and there should be a default ring with no mods that anyone can join for each metadata but people probably dont subscribe to because it ends up being terrible?

[02:12] somni: -- and then in settings you can configure where all the metadata symbols go on a given post

[02:16] somni: --

okay some metadata is filter-shaped and helps you Notice things

like you could download a filter that helps you notice haikus in posts and puts a green dot on the upper right corner of posts with haikus

[02:18] somni: (or set the dot to whatever part of the post you want in [settings]! (maybe want non-intersection with other filters/metadata??))

[02:20] somni: or you could set the metadata to invisible on posts but be able to search for posts such that haiku:1 in the search bar

[02:22] somni: which gives all the posts that have haikus in them

[02:28] somni: depending on how metadata and filter algs are run, this could slow things down a lot if you have a lot of them i think?? but the idea is you have a long tail of metadata and filters and most people only use one or two. but it's fiiiiiinee. allow :clap: people :clap: to :clap: break :clap: their :clap: minds :clap: with :clap: information :clap: overload :clap: