Wow, an alternative thought.
a site like 4chan, where you can post any time, whatever you like, anonymously ... but then you get into problems of propriety ... which might offend, but that's not really the problem ... it's a problem of identity. what if someone started posting offensive stuff as you? so you need to not identify yourself, in any way ... except, you are identified. if people respond to your post, they are replying to you, even thought they know nothing about you at all, whatsoever - since you didn't post any identifying information at all - except that you posted.
4chan allows you to comment on a post, and your comment becomes just another post, although a record of the association with the post being commented on is retained. but the truth is 4chan does not implement this well. result: utter chaos.
4chan is amazing. how can I say it's not well implemented? well, it's not.
when you visit atempenote, you can post something. it just becomes part of the stream of posts. posting about a post creates a tree structure, and i just realized something: a tree does not need to be viewed as a tree to be useful. a tree, or a part of a tree, can be, shall we say, linearized, and then it will "read" like this: last post, last comment on last post, last comment on last comment on last post, next to last comment on last post, second to last post, and so on.
you can view the tree, now, in two ways. one is just chronologically ... the last post posted was this, and the second to last was this other thing ... and that is just a complete jumble ... but, might be interesting ... or you can linearize the tree, and then the listing will read as a series of conversations. it's just the simplest, most basic switch up, but it could be revelatory. because it's so simple, such a simple adjustment, so fucking obvious, nobody's paying any attention to it.
