Why not to allow 3rd, 4th, etc. level for messages, as in LiquidThreads?
If user A creates a post, B replies to A, A replies to B and C replies to A's first post, C's reply could be misinterpreted as a reply to A's second post. This is undesirable.
Topic on Talk:Structured Discussions/Flow
Ricordisamoa: We want whatever we build to work across all the different kinds of devices that people use to access Wikipedia now and 5-10 years from now: desktop, laptop, tablet, phone (mobile phones currently represent ~20-30% of Wikipedia pageview traffic, and this number is steadily growing). Infinite levels of threading display very badly on smaller screens. We're testing 3 levels currently (reply to topic, reply to user, reply to user's reply) to see if this suffices for more complex back-and-forth discussions.
Maryana (WMF): anyway, Common Sense should forbid users creating more-than-5-level threads.
Maryana (WMF): Can't you increase the width of the comment threads a bit? It's somewhat weird: Articles are much more dense in terms of the information contained yet they extend over the entire width of your screen, but discussion threads (here) only get roughly 60% of the normal width of a Wikipedia page.
Pajz: Full width looks very strange with short comments and is difficult to read. Following 1 line of text across an entire screen is tough on the eye. There's some more info on this at the Flow design FAQ if you're interested.
Maryana (WMF): While I agree with using an optimal reading width; with further nesting levels you run into the issue of the comment being less than the optimal width. I assume the reason for the first nesting level having a smaller font size was to solve this, however you won't be able to just keep lowering the font-size for additional nesting levels.
The easiest solution would be to allow nested comments to extend out further, however this would look pretty messy. So perhaps the solution is to meet it half way and extend the width to a bit greater than optimal, so nested comments are a bit closer to optimal?
137.147.205.98: I mostly agree with your comment right there. Additionally, longer replies get more compressed in such a narrow width.
Since Maryana said it's at approximately 60% width right now, I'd just take a guess that 70%-80% would still look good, and meet half-way with the two opinions on the width.
Why not just do like Reddit does and have the ability to enter into deeper thread layers?
We were already discussing this as part of Thread structure of Flow needs improvement.
At least a third level of threading will be available soon. If this will suffice we'll see...
Shouldn't it be configurable?
nesting broken test
nesting only work in source edit
Patrick87: A third level is, indeed, now available :)
Maryana (WMF): yeah, it is!
Can I make a fourth available?
now its working
nesting seems broken
Given that the acceptance of Flow/Structured Discussions by the Wikimedia community is already hard, why make it harder by not allowing the administrators of wherever it gets installed to decide on the level of nesting?
Yes, agreed, this seems like something that admins should be able to decide. It makes sense to have an opinionated default but to make this difficult to change is just silly.
Plus there ARE solutions to making deeply threaded conversations mobile friendly. Reddit does it after all.