Perhaps I should have clarified that I meant better in a UX sense.
Those cons you mention definitely do exist, they're an emergent problem of the conversations and communities that arise, but opinion bubbles never seem to be a bottleneck for a platform gaining popularity - which makes sense since they, by definition, favor the majority's opinion.
I'm also not convinced that chronological ordering is better for diversity of opinion: comments might not be hidden directly, but they can be drowned. In a reddit-like system each user can downvote you just once, while in a message board system each user can post N times, with each post making your opinion a smaller portion of the conversation.
What chronological posts are better at is favoring power users over casual users: there is a clear advantage for those who can post early and/or often. For everything besides the starting post of the thread, it also rewards short and not very thoughtful posts (since posting later is punished in visibility). The result is also a bubble, and one dictated by the people that spend their lives on the boards.
And in my personal opinion, there's not a lot of overlap between the people that lead interesting lives and are great at their fields and those willing to spend a great portion of their life in a message board.
Hmm. Maybe a solution to this is a limited number of posts per day/week. Or a limited number of upvotes/downvotes to give out. It would (helpfully) people to be concise and thoughtful with their comments.
Those cons you mention definitely do exist, they're an emergent problem of the conversations and communities that arise, but opinion bubbles never seem to be a bottleneck for a platform gaining popularity - which makes sense since they, by definition, favor the majority's opinion.
I'm also not convinced that chronological ordering is better for diversity of opinion: comments might not be hidden directly, but they can be drowned. In a reddit-like system each user can downvote you just once, while in a message board system each user can post N times, with each post making your opinion a smaller portion of the conversation.
What chronological posts are better at is favoring power users over casual users: there is a clear advantage for those who can post early and/or often. For everything besides the starting post of the thread, it also rewards short and not very thoughtful posts (since posting later is punished in visibility). The result is also a bubble, and one dictated by the people that spend their lives on the boards.
And in my personal opinion, there's not a lot of overlap between the people that lead interesting lives and are great at their fields and those willing to spend a great portion of their life in a message board.