Should Yoomoot allow people to post a reply without having to ask or answer a question?

Yes, it would free users to say what they really mean to say.

See my questions in response to the "No" answer.  In that, I mostly argue about the other ways to obtain the same goal of organized discussion, framed as questions.  But here I might further argue that no matter what aids to organization might be offered or imposed, there will always be new and different ways people want to interact that are not aided by the facilities provided, nor are they encouraged to even exist in the face of active discouragement.  There is a lot more benefit in encouraging more communication than in organizing that communication.

I actually don't find that the Q and A format is helping me to figure out what has been discussed.  I still have to figure out where a question might be asked or answered, even if it is not requested.   It might help the writer to think in terms of how their particular contribution relates, but, again, there are many more ways of relating that don't fit any specific constraints let alone the Q and A format.  Even with Q and A, we still have diverging discussions that start one place and end up quite far afield.  

Searching is often the best way to find things of interest, and that should be a clue about how things should be organized.  We need better integration between searching and browsing.  Easier ways of selecting or adding tags and categories, expressing approval/disapproval, linking to other related content, and several other ways of augmenting the semantics of any contribution will all help better integrate otherwise undifferentiated text into an organized whole. 

• By Daniel LaLiberte
• Oct. 15, 2009

No, it would turn discussions into pages of messy undifferentiated text

It's true that 'speaking in questions' is awkward at first. However, allowing free-form comments would lead to a big problem.

Basically, free-form comments are indeed more intuitive and natural. Because of this they're much better than our Q&A system at the point of writing the reply. However, what happens is that the discussion ends up turning into an 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.

So if anyone wants to go back and read what's being said, or is entirely new to the discussion, they have to read the whole discussion from start to finish to understand what's being said. That makes online discussion really bad at being re-usable information resources or at facilitating mass participation. So many great ideas are lost to the oblivion of ten-page-long threads on standard web forums.

By forcing people to speak only Q&A, Yoomoot means that everything said has a clearly-labeled focus (the question acts like a kind of chapter heading) and everything is divided into separate sections, so it's much quicker to browse a big discussion, get a sense of its structure and find the parts you're interested in.

To me, speaking in Q&A is like learning to drive a car. At first, it's totally unnatural. But in time the car feels like an extension of your body. It takes time to get used to but is well worth the effort. So it is with speaking in Q&A. It's worth getting the hang of it because it transforms the Internet's potential for mass communication.

So in, summary:

• Free-form comments make it easier to reply, but harder to digest long discussions
• Interlinked Q&As make it harder to reply, but easier to digest long discussions
  

• By Nicolas Holzapfel
• Oct. 15, 2009

No, existing forums and email archives demonstrate that searching is not enough

Ever tried searching a mailing list archive? The search results show a list of email titles (maybe with snippets of text and keywords highlighted). Very often, this info is not enough to give you a good idea of the content contained within that email thread. Message board search mechanisms suffer from the same thing (and that's the best ones; most are barely useable due to bad design).

The problem is that conversation naturally meander. One subject leads to another and a thread may contain a wealth of great content not described by the thread's title.

By requiring every post to focus on asking or answering a specific question, Yoomoot ensures that a thread's title (the question) is always an accurate description of its content. This makes searching through archives infinitely easier.

There's one mailing list in particular that I'm on and trying to search it's archives is such a painful experience. I wish they'd all just move to Yoomoot. Yes I co-founded Yoomoot, but I co-founded it because the existing alternatives are so frustrating!

• By Nicolas Holzapfel
• Oct. 15, 2009

Yes, with limitations

The comments users can place should be just one-line-comments like we know it from stackoverflow.com. This is helpful when you want to place additional information to a question or answer.

• By Joern Akkermann
• Oct. 15, 2009

No, the Q&A restriction encourages focused, structured thinking

See yoomoot's razor: How Yoomoot keeps discussions sharp and focused  

• By Nicolas Holzapfel
• Oct. 15, 2009