Beyond Posts and Comments: A New Paradigm for Online Discussions

This is a proposal of system design changes.

Here we will discuss about threads/post architecture in social media platform like facebook.com vs threads.net.

Current Architecture (Separate Post and Comment models):

A thread can be like this:

Post: Favorite Programming Languages
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+-- Comment 1: I love Python because of its simplicity and versatility...
|  |
|  +-- Comment 2: I agree! Python's extensive library ecosystem is also a huge plus.
|    |
|    +-- Comment 3: True, but have you faced any performance issues with Python in large-scale applications?
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+-- Comment 4: I prefer JavaScript. With Node.js, you can use it for both frontend and backend development.

Here the normal post architecture is:

1. UserA creates a thread t.
2. userB comments on thread(t)
3. userC comments on thread(t)

There is separation of concern. i.e

1. post are stored in post modal.
2. comments are stored in comment model

let's take a demo:

1.

Above thread has multiple comments, no matter how many comments there is, comments are treated separately.

Pros:

1. Separation of concern
2. Simplicity.
3. Easier to understand for developers familiar with traditional blog/forum structures

Cons:

1. Difficult to elevate valuable comments to standalone content
2. Requires separate API endpoints and logic for posts and comments

The proposal of unified content modal

Now the proposal is, for example in the above post,

1. Each comment in the post are itself a post.
2. Unified content Architecture.
3. Everything is a post.

Why?

If the proposed idea/solution is really nice. Or is problem solving then it should not be a minor contribution on someone's question/post. But rather a topic that can be discussed futher.

For example in the picture:

If User proposes a really nice explanation to the question, let's say proposes a hypothesis that is really brilliant. It should show up a post itself, which will incentives the user base for more engagement, later the comments made on post can also be tagged to user's signature.

Pros:

1. Flexible content hierarchy - any content can be a thread or reply
2. Easier to implement features like promoting comments to threads
3. Better represents the fluid nature of online discussions

A really nice example i found out was from Threads.net:

Here's post from porche:

A user just ordered a porsche, showed in first comment, which many people might find a good topic of discussion, for say CommentA

Threads treat comments as a separate thread.

So the comment i.e ordering a new porsche itself a new thread.

Here, another user replies to the 1st user who bought a car, saying well done

Here the commentA has more comments. Let's call it commentAa.

In this architecture you can clearly see, how threads treats it's post and comment as everything is a post modal.

These are the good side of the Everything is a post modal.

What about Cons?

1. More complex data model, potentially harder for new developers to understand
2. May require more sophisticated queries to reconstruct thread hierarchies
3. Could lead to performance challenges with deeply nested threads if not optimized
4. Might require more complex UI logic to handle different content types
5. Data migration from the old model could be challenging
6. Risk of "content type creep" if not carefully managed

Brainstorming the idea:

Now's see see what are some data structures that can make our hypothesis come to life?

in the future post we will discuss about Data structure and Algorithm, that can bring the blueprint to life.

#systemdesign #threads #architecture