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Hi @Lehrling,

Welcome to the community,

It was a deliberate choice to structure the community in this way, with full knowledge of the downsides you mention.

To explain the behaviour...

A discussion forum model uses a chronology of posts, with oldest at the top, and newest at the bottom. Usually there is only a single thread, and they rely upon quoting to reply to a specific older post in the same thread.

This encourages a discussion back and forth between users, and keeps things nice and linear for our brains to follow.

During pre-launch testing, this community initially had that model - and we chose NOT to continue with it, and instead go a different way.

The big problem for us with the forum structure is that it can take a lot of reading and encourages back and forth discussion, not normally the most efficient way to clearly deliver the best answer.

It might even present an incorrect or low quality answer at the top, just because it was first, requiring moderation or apparent 'censorship' to remove it from prime position. I would rather avoid that situation when a community driven merit system can solve the problem instead.

The structure of this community is to drive the BEST answer to appear immediately below the question, regardless of when it was posted, first, last or some time in the middle.

To do this, the response structure is a divided between ONE original Question, comments about the question, then many possible Answers, and then many possible Comment trees to each of those Answers.

The choice to prioritise the best Answer, over a logical discussion is not unique to this community and is very popular in developer Q&A sites (such as stack overflow), where a high quality clearly presented single answer is ultimately preferred and more valuable than a good/lengthy discussion.

Answers initially are ranked by post date, newest at the top (because presumably they are adding something different and better than what is already there), however another answer that has been upvoted will take priority over any other date ranked post (because people like it more), and an 'Accepted Answer' will take priority over all (unless there is another Accepted answer that is higher voted, or newer).

The downside is where there is not a clear answer, or some discussion or investigation is required, and then I agree the community structure can get EXTREMELY confusing. However my intention for the community is not to be or encourage a discussion space, but a productive exchange of the best answers to the re-occuring questions, and that is the priority which decided to make it like this.

I think the success of this community has supported that decision.

There are also alternative platforms on the internet that specialise in Victron, and even potentially enough space for a completely independent Victron discussion, design or DIY forum that is more conducive to a linear conversation.

I would personally consider it a big success if there was enough interest in Victron to drive someone to create, support and maintain that, as having it would go a long way to removing demand pressure on this site to be something that it is not intended to be.

PS - I took the liberty of creating a new question for you, moving it from where you initially posted it.

The biggest issue is with the "comments" (replies to answers") and "comments to comments". Sorting by "oldest" (to read them in chronological order) does not work for these.

Simple is always better, I think you are overthinking it.

You underestimate the reader's ability to follow, absorb and process the information as it comes in.

You said it yourself:

"A discussion forum model uses a chronology of posts, with oldest at the top, and newest at the bottom. Usually there is only a single thread, and they rely upon quoting to reply to a specific older post in the same thread.

This encourages a discussion back and forth between users, and keeps things nice and linear for our brains to follow."

I have personally read many multi-page forum threads that follow the model you described and prefer that.

The solution here could be that we all just Answer and stop using comments and replies. Just like using Victron products, sometimes workarounds are necessary.

For me it is very confusing finding the right answers to questions because most of the questioners forget to mark their questions answered (in case they get the answer they were seeking for).

Maybe this can be improved in some way?

Really neat trick adjusting ppl's notifications to spam their inbox's.

An unwarranted invasion of ppl's privacy.

GGgrr. S.