Actually I think this page itself shows that flat discussions don't work well *if* too many people leave comments and the discussion grows too large. Here's why: I thought this blog post was interesting, and wondered "what do people think about it?". However, I didn't read many comments on this page (flat discussion system), to find out. Instead, I read people's opinions @ Hacker News (a threaded discussion system — which discusses this blog post) (here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4919111 ) On this blog post page, there are too many comments not sorted in any particular manner (well, by date, but that's somewhat random, when people happen to find the page?). If I start reading, I think I'd have to spend quite some time, before I find the "most insightful" comments (which are the ones I'd like to read). However, @ Hacker News, comments are sorted by votes, and I only need to read a few posts, to find insightful comments on this blog post. I think flat layouts are geared towards *writers* — I mean, those who actively participate in the discussion, and read all comments. Then flat/threaded doesn't matter much, since one reads everything anyway. Threaded layout, with comments sorted by votes, however, might be more geared towards *readers*. Readers are generally short of time and just want to be served the most "interesting/useful" comments, read them and then go on doing whatever they need to do. Then it makes sense to let those comments surface to the top of the page. Thanks for an interesting blog post :-)

Hi Jeff There're at least one additional initiative to building new forum software. I'm developing this: http://www.debiki.com/for/forums Interestingly enough, Discourse and Debiki have chosen fairly different things to improve :-) I listed Discourse on this page with links to "forum software for the future": http://www.debiki.com/forum/-61859-forum-software-for-the-future (My first comment on your blog.) Best regards, KajMagnus

@Neilehat, who wrote: "Perhaps from viewing the problem from this perspective, tighter Legislation is warranted" -- Your perspective is rather unrealistic though, since you ignore all reasons why software patents are bad, and focus only on other cases. From my point of view (I'm a software developer), software patents are fairly similar to patents on book stories (e.g. a "female hero" and a "dragon and knight" patent): they kind of restrict your freedom of thought. -- For software patents, tighter legislation would be rather bad, but fortunately I don't live in the US. And I'm thinking about avoiding that country, and focusingon India instead (when I'm marketing a service I'm building) , where sofware patents seems to be disallowed.