[thelist] Bulletin Board

[Jacob Stetser]

Threaded discussions are a usability nightmare. Usually you get one 
message on one page and that means that a) threads tend to wander 
because the messages aren't contiguous and therefore topic drift is 
not as obvious; b) you have to click through 20 pages for 20 
messages; c) you can't refer to a previous message without going back 
to the list and finding the message, as opposed to scrolling up the 
page.

Flat boards such as the UBB tend to support single-minded threads, 
which I like to call 'conversations' that usually stay on topic. This 
generally avoids whole threads where the topic says "Horse Breeding" 
and the people are talking about Barbie dolls.

Unless you're trying to up that hit count for your advertisers 
drastically, go with flat. FLat boards tend to be faster, more on 
topic, and easier to navigate (fewer levels of navigation).

>At 05:48 PM 8/23/00, you wrote:
>>Try the free/trial version of UBB.  I run 4 UBBs, the full version, and think
>>it's the best available.
>>http://www.ultimatebb.com/home/freebie.shtml
>
>But it doesn't have support for threaded discussions.
>
>Regards,
>
>Madhu
>
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