Feels to me like this is a subcase of the more general problem that it’s hard to find related content, especially more recent related content. It’s easy to include a link in a new post pointing back at whatever’s being distilled, but someone who stumbles on the old post/thread has no way to know that there’s a summary, less technical explanation, more technical explanation, better central metaphor, etc available in some later post.
For instance, a sidebar of “posts which link to this one” would make distillation-type posts more visible and useful, while also solving other problems too.
It seems to me like working on visibility of related content in general would be higher-impact than working on specific use-cases, at least right now. If there were already a related-visibility system in place, then it would make more sense to add special use-cases like distillation on top of it.
I agree that adding a list of “things that linked to this post” at the bottom of a post would be a good related step (and maybe a better “next action” than any more complicated distillation pipeline stuff)
It almost[1] sounds like auto-generated sequences—that is, linked posts being collected together into a sequence, automatically—would be a good idea.
[1] This might make people more hesitant to link posts together, or create a mess—it might be hard to come up with algorithms that can tell when to make 1 sequence, and when to make 2.
The closest alternative seems like a general graph navigation system. (With post titles as nodes [2], and links between linked posts, and possibly colors indicating direction (A linked to B is red if you have A selected, but Blue if B is selected.))
[2] And a link for going to a post if you’ve selected that node.
at the bottom of a post
With regards to distillation, I’d note that if a post is really long this might not be ideal, especially for users who don’t know their way around this site—those who do know their way around, and about the feature, can just click on the Comments link in the title, then scroll up to see the bottom of the post.
Feels to me like this is a subcase of the more general problem that it’s hard to find related content, especially more recent related content. It’s easy to include a link in a new post pointing back at whatever’s being distilled, but someone who stumbles on the old post/thread has no way to know that there’s a summary, less technical explanation, more technical explanation, better central metaphor, etc available in some later post.
For instance, a sidebar of “posts which link to this one” would make distillation-type posts more visible and useful, while also solving other problems too.
It seems to me like working on visibility of related content in general would be higher-impact than working on specific use-cases, at least right now. If there were already a related-visibility system in place, then it would make more sense to add special use-cases like distillation on top of it.
I agree that adding a list of “things that linked to this post” at the bottom of a post would be a good related step (and maybe a better “next action” than any more complicated distillation pipeline stuff)
It almost[1] sounds like auto-generated sequences—that is, linked posts being collected together into a sequence, automatically—would be a good idea.
[1] This might make people more hesitant to link posts together, or create a mess—it might be hard to come up with algorithms that can tell when to make 1 sequence, and when to make 2.
The closest alternative seems like a general graph navigation system. (With post titles as nodes [2], and links between linked posts, and possibly colors indicating direction (A linked to B is red if you have A selected, but Blue if B is selected.))
[2] And a link for going to a post if you’ve selected that node.
With regards to distillation, I’d note that if a post is really long this might not be ideal, especially for users who don’t know their way around this site—those who do know their way around, and about the feature, can just click on the Comments link in the title, then scroll up to see the bottom of the post.