>I don't think the novelty explains very much, the digg/reddit comment tree format is a clear improvement in the sense that it makes it easier to find and track interesting discussions. I always liked the aspect that you could follow a coherent back and forth where the people carrying the conversation tend to change with each comment. Even with all its problems, I can't think of another format that can match it in terms of sharing the spotlight among a diverse set of voices.
That's exactly the problem.
Colocating everything in one place basically invites the internet riff-raff to shit all over everything. You have some asshole who spends most of his time lying about solar panels by cherry picking links wandering into some area where people talk about potato chips doing his thing there to everyone's detriment.
And then you start keeping score and it incentivizes all sorts of bad drive-by contribution behavior, circle jerking, etc, etc which very clearly has an un-diversifying effect.
All that shit combines to create a community where 99.999% of the content and the same amount of the discussion is about the same quality, accuracy and honesty of a grocery store tabloid.
Your take would have been defensible in 2016 but with a decade of hindsight I don't see how any honest person can think all that.
Ok, but is this because of tree-style discussions or is it because of up/downvote mechanics? Or because of their combination?
Or is it completely unrelated and has more to do with the size of those communities?
In my experience, it is the upvote/downvote mechanic in combination with critical mass. I was a long time paid subscriber to a popular tech/science news site that had an active comment section and a moderately sized active user base. I really loved it, checking in several times every day as new articles were posted. The discussions were great, even though I commonly disagreed with many users point of view. Posts felt genuine and ideas were well thought out and defended.
I like to think that because of this, the site grew in popularity. As it did, the comment section degraded in post quality and thoughtfulness of responses. The sites news editors more and more catered to their audience, and the quality of the articles likewise declined until it was one giant groupthink echo chamber, all chronologically organized without using a tree system.
I gave up and unsubscribed. I would like to try removing the arrows from forums so that no one can offload their thinking to the group. Everyone will be forced to decide on their own if a post is good or bad without the benefit of the group telling them what to think.