Facebook is really not built to facilitate intelligent conversation, is it?

[randomness]

There's a conversation going on in a Facebook group I'm in that may someday become my personal Exhibit A for why Facebook is a terrible place to have any kind of substantive, meaningful conversation.

I'm not linking to it now because I don't need an Exhibit A at the moment. Moreover, pointing large numbers of people at the conversation who have no connection to the group will probably not be helpful.

Comments

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

The lack of simple quoting and threading is definitely a problem.

On the other hand, it may be that the Internt, or Earth, both suffer from similar problems...

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, it may be that the Internt, or Earth, both suffer from similar problems...

While you're certainly not wrong about that, I've had conversations off-line with folks contrasting LiveJournal's granular handling of comments within posts with the lack of functionality to do the same in Facebook.

That conversation over on FB is definitely suffering from not having those tools. One of the moderators has been having some trouble with the lack of ability to put a conversation on hold so comments can get filtered before going public.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

I agree with the basic, technical lack of ability to keep coherent conversations.

But the whole interface practically begs for the ten-second, off-the-cuff comment which is not something that facilitates thoughtful conversation, either.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

But the whole interface practically begs for the ten-second, off-the-cuff comment which is not something that facilitates thoughtful conversation, either.

Yes. It's definitely the wrong tool for the task.

[ron_newman]

To my knowledge, LJ doesn't give moderators the power to "put a conversation on hold" either. (If it does, please let me know how, since that could occasionally prove useful in the LJ community I co-moderate.)

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I find I can freeze comments individually on a personal LJ. I can also retroactively disable comments, or screen them, and I can change the security on an entire post. Each of these options is available on the "edit post" page.

I don't administer a community LJ, so I can't speak to how those work.

[ron_newman]

As a community moderator, I do not have the ability to do any of these things, except to retroactively screen comments that have already been posted.

ETA: I can also freeze already-posted comments (thus preventing new direct replies to them), but I can't prevent new top-level comments from being added.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I wonder why community LJs work differently from personal ones.

Maybe it has to do with the fact that multiple accounts can moderate communities?