User demand is lacking

[koganbot]

Has anyone ever asked the livejournal people why they don't have a "new comments"/"updated thread" feature? Nested threads and the lack of an update/new comments feature are the two problems that make lj a worse format than ilX for ongoing discussion.

Of course, if people want a discussion they'll have one, and I'm here basically because discussion falters and founders on ilX. But it falters and founders everywhere, to some extent (and the average comment thread on ilX is vastly better than the average comment thread on the Web as a whole). Back to my original question, an answer might well be, "Because there isn't enough user demand for such feature."

Speaking of discussion, yesterday the convo about Rihanna lyrics migrated here ("Fire Bomb") and here ("Te Amo") (EDIT: and over to Dave's Tumblr, and somehow I missed Erika a few days ago here, with pre-revisionist Dave on the comment thread). And Chuck and I added lotsa new content to poptimists' artist shoutouts thread (with Chuck grumbling about how the convos there are already over before he gets a chance to contribute to them).

Meanwhile over on Tumblr, Maura writes (in regard to chillwave/beach-pop/wavegaze, a music genre, apparently, though if everything runs true to form I'll not hear any of it until no one's making it anymore, but anyway I'm linking Maura's post not for the music wave but for its relevance to dropped discussions):

Maybe this is another thing about the appeal of this particular music to people who write online — it's in some ways a reflection? People on all sides are trying to muddle through their creative impulses with tools that allow for instant publishing/dissemination, and by extension the impulse to get something out overtakes the impulse to make something "right" in whatever abstract sense.

And Tom adds:

I think that's very likely it. (talking about "chillwave"). "Perfect is the enemy of done" and all that - a big current in internet thought.

And I'll add that "news" is the enemy of discussion, which is a different point. "Perfect is the enemy of done" can encourage discussion, if the attitude is "let's throw our ideas forth for the general convo to modify and elaborate on rather than trying to perfect 'em first, alone." Whereas "let's jump to what's new and what's hot" only encourages discussion if there are already good ongoing convos that can add in the new topic. If not, the jumping is just more reason to avoid follow through. --In old media, rock journalism, and journalism in general, always veered towards news superseding follow-through, so why should the Web be different? Not a rhetorical question, since maybe the Web will evolve to something different, but journalism was the way it was at least partly owing to customer demand (customers being advertisers as well as readers, of course).

EDIT: Kuhnian content on comment thread.

Comments

[koganbot]

(I still owe Mark an answer to two of his question here ("what is it that is causing us to talk past each other?," part two going "needs exploration of possible reasons, from the 'mental illness' and 'poor reading/reasoning ability' of individuals to broader social or economic or political or cultural lacks, distortions, failures, misconceived institutions and practices (which presumably also beg explanation), which -- at miminum -- fail effectively to challenge or transform or even much help the poorly accoutred individuals"), though I'm swamped so probably won't get to it this month. A way to sum up part two might be "Why isn't there enough demand that we not talk past each other, and what gets in the way of meeting the demand where it does - or at least might - exist?")

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

re the gods-and-transcendence disscussion: i think my intuition here -- not at all worked into a convincing argument -- is that these have developed as institutions to against against the ravages of the demand to chase after the urgent new topic of discussion...

so that transcendence is a counter to fashion, to get us back to the discussion; and fashion is a counter to transcendence, to allow us to introduce genuinely new information

but this is very sketchily thought through indeed!

[koganbot]

And my counter to that was that "transcendence" can and does go either way, can carry the new in on wings of transcendence. Saying that "transcendence" serves one master is like saying that irony serves one master, which is to say that it's a device.

But that whole transcendence discussion was one that didn't sustain itself.