Serial vs. Browsed, Reader-Friendly vs. Writer-Friendly
Submitted by brad on Wed, 2004-07-14 04:54Online discussion and collaboration tools are old now, dating back almost 40 years to PLATO, 30 years for mailing lists, 25 years for BBSs and USENET. Yet somehow I don't feel we've got it right yet, and in fact may be going in some wrong directions.
I beleive there are two central dichotomies that make the problem hard to solve.
The first is the distinction between "serial" material which is meant to be read as a stream (though perhaps referenced later) and "browsable" information meant to be read in a somewhat more random order.