Civilized Discourse Construction Kit
Judging from the beta (<a href="http://try.discourse.org/" rel="nofollow">http://try.discourse.org/</a>) it doesn't seem to provide anything new in terms of managing a civilized discourse. The structure of the posts is very similar to regular forums; the only difference being the explicit replies, but they almost do more harm than good in the current implementation (it's just an expandable <blockquote> and doesn't really help me understand the context).<p>What I want from a "civilized discourse construction kit":<p>- Build it for a real community and try to make it work within that community.<p>- Make it possible to close threads, write summary for threads, group threads together, explore a topic. In general: Don't make the threads all about <i>real-time</i>, but rather focus on how they can be useful in the future.<p>- Bring more structure than linear comments, but less complexity than threaded comments.<p>- Encourage longer responses.<p>There was recently a good thread on Reddit about this: <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/171xod/the_joys_of_having_a_forever_project_whats_your/c81gng9" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/171xod/the_joys...</a>