Order without authority: How Yoomoot makes long and complex discussions navigable

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The problem: long discussions are unreadably messy
A long online discussion amounts to an enormous list of undifferentiated text. There are no dividers or subheadings, no logical progression of arguments or groupings of opinion and no distinction between unique, intelligent insights and throwaway expressions of approval and opposition. In contrast, a Yoomoot discussion may have a thousand posts and a hundred tangents but will always be as structured and as quick-to-browse as a Wikipedia article.

Solution 1: Replies restricted to nested Q&A
yoomooters can only reply to each other via questions and answers. This unique restriction means that, without any outside intervention, everything said is clearly grouped together by topic. Instead of labouring through an enormous list of undifferentiated text, we need only glance through a list of questions to find the points that interest us.

Solutions 2 & 3: Summarized versions and discussion browser
Secondly, everything on Yoomoot has a detailed version and a 111-character summarized version. Our optional 'discussion browser' shows only the summarized versions. Via the discussion browser, we can get a convenient overview of long and complex discussions.

Solutions 4: Question-specific labels
Sometimes a question will end up with a large number of answers. Users can work together to organise such answers by labeling them. These labels help users to make sense of large numbers of answers and focus on the kinds of answers they're particularly interested in. Labels are similar to 'tags' but, unlike on other sites, each question has its own unique set of labels. This avoids the problem which other sites encounter with collaboratively-managed tags, whereby tags become too overwhelmingly numerous to be useful. (This solution is not fully implemented yet)