I like his UI. In fact, I shared about CQ2 with Andy in February since his notes site was the only other place where I had seen the sliding pane design. He said CQ2 is neat!

would have more value to the user

This feels self and learning focused, as opposed to problem and helping focused, and I'm building CQ2 for the latter.

Small threads with 1 or 2 replies are more likely to be people pointing out typos or just saying +1 to a particular passage.

There could also be important and/or interesting points in a thread with only 1 or 2 replies, and implementing this idea would prevent many people from finding that point, right?

just saying +1 to a particular passage

Will add upvote/downvote.

Thanks @Celarix! I've got the same feedback from three people now, so seems like a good idea. However, I haven't understood why it's necessary. For a forum, I think it would make sense -- many people prefer reading the most active threads. For a discussion tool, I can't think of any reason why it would matter how many comments a thread has. Maybe the point is to let a user know if there's any progress in a thread over time, which makes sense.

Update: now you can create discussions on CQ2! And, here's a demo with an actual LessWrong discussion between Vanessa and Rob: https://cq2.co/demo.

P.S. I'm open to ideas on building this in collaboration with LessWrong!

Thanks for the feedback!

I think it's quite important that I can at least see the number of responses to a comment before I have to click on the comment icon. Currently it only shows me a generic comment icon if there are any replies.

Can you share why you think it's quite important (for a work communication tool)? For a forum, I think it would make sense -- many people prefer reading the most active threads. For a work communication tool, I can't think of any reason why it would matter how many comments a thread has.

I think one of the core use-cases of a comment UI is reading back and forth between two users. This UI currently makes that a quite disjointed operation. I think it's fine to prioritize a different UI experience, but it does feel like a big loss to me.

I thought about this for quite a while and have started to realise that the "posts" UI could be too complicated. I'm going to try out the "chat" and "DMs" UI for posts and see how it goes. Thanks!

Although "Chat" and "DMs"' UI allows easily followable back and forth between people, I would like to point out that CQ2 advocates for topic-wise discussions, not person-wise. Here's an example comment from LessWrong. In that comment, it's almost impossible to figure out where the quotes are from -- i.e., what's the context. And what happened next is another person replied to that comment with more quotes. This example was a bit extreme with many quotes but I think my point applies to every comment with quotes. One needs to scroll person-wise through so many topics, instead of topic-wise. I (and CQ2) prefer exploring what are people's thoughts topic-by-topic, not what are the thoughts on all topics simultaneously, person-by-person.

Again, not saying my design is good for LessWrong; I understand forums have their own place. But I think for a tool for work, people would prefer topic-wise over person-wise.

Hello! I'm building an open source communication tool with a one-of-a-kind UI for LessWrong kind of deep, rational discussions. The tool is called CQ2 (https://cq2.co). It has a sliding panes design with quote-level threads. There's a concept of "posts" for more serious discussions with many people and there's "chat" for less serious ones, and both of them have a UI crafted for deep discussions.

I simulated some LessWrong discussions there – they turned out to be a lot more organised and easy to follow. You can check them out in the chat channel and direct message part of the demo on the site. However, it is a bit inconvenient – there's horizontal scrolling and one needs to click to open new threads. Since forums need to prioritize convenience, I think CQ2's design isn't good for LessWrong. But I think the inconvenience is worth it for such discussions at writing-first teams, since it helps them with hyper-focusing on one thing at a time and avoid losing context in order to come to a conclusion and make decisions.

If you have such discussions at work, I would love to learn about your team, your frustrations with existing communication tools, and better understand how CQ2 can help! I would appreciate any feedback or leads! I feel my comment might come off as an ad, but I (and CQ2) strongly share LessWrong's "improving our reasoning and decision-making" core belief and it's open source.

I found LessWrong a few months back. It's a wonderful platform and I particularly love the clean design. I've always loved how writing forces a deeper clarity of thinking and focuses on getting to the right answer.

P.S. I had mistakenly posted this comment in the previous, old Open Thread, hence resharing here.

Hello! I'm building a tool with a one of a kind UI for LessWrong kind of deep, rational discussions. I've always loved how writing forces a deeper clarity of thinking and focuses on getting to the right answer. The tool is called CQ2. It has a sliding panes design with quote-level threads. There's a concept of "posts" for more serious discussions with many people and there's "chat" for less serious ones, but both of them have a UI crafted for deep discussions. It's open source as well.

I simulated some LessWrong discussions there – they turned out to be more organised and easy to follow. However, it is a bit inconvenient – there's horizontal scrolling and one needs to click to open new threads. Since forums need to prioritize convenience, I think CQ2's design isn't good for LessWrong. But I think the inconvenience is worth it for such discussions at writing-first teams, since it helps hyper-focus on one thing at a time and avoid losing context.

If you have such discussions at work, I would love to learn about your team, your frustrations with existing communication tools, and better understand how CQ2 can help! I would appreciate any feedback or leads! I think my comment might come off as an ad, but I (and CQ2) strongly share LessWrong's "improving our reasoning and decision-making" core belief.

I found LessWrong a few months back. It's a wonderful platform and I particularly love the clean design.