There needs to be a better way of handling group conversations. IRC uses the constant scroll mentality. Email has reply-at-top, reply-at-bottom, and reply-inline.
Forums, reddit, Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and the like have a scroll-like view – every new post is merely sequentially listed after the last.
This can all lead to highly confusing digital conversations.
Somebody should make a parallel (maybe columnar) discussion/chat/email system where every participant can get their own space to reply, they can reply to specific things from different people, and everything can be viewed in an identified manner. Similar to how Track Changes works in Microsoft Word.
Surely it should be That Difficult™ to do this, should it?
I’d have to see a concept design of this, but I’m curious as to the readability of the whole thing. Maybe a better interface for citing things you’re responding to from different messages (showing as links that jump straight to the text in question) would be more intuitive?
I guess my main goal is making the interface “better” .. I should have a graphic approximating a first-cut for you soon