Its been obvious for a while that the discussion functionality on Freebase needed some love. This was most apparent on the pages for commonly discussed topics like the data page where it was practically impossible to find your way through the thicket of different threads. And linking to a particular thread? Forget about it.

Enter the new discuss interface. Some key capabilities that were added include:

• separate pages per thread – example



• summary view with collapse-able threads – example



• ability to link a thread to multiple topics – example

We’ve also kept around many of the old features for your enjoyment:

• rich text editing – including linking to Freebase topics
• RSS support – accessible via the orange RSS icon in the the location bar of your browser
• watch discussions – to access them from your homepage, click the star in the upper right to add or remove a watched discussion

We hope you find the new discuss functionality to be an improvement. We’re planning to enhance it further in the future. First up will be a way to disconnect a thread from a topic and the ability to navigate to a dedicated thread page from the summary page among other improvements. Your comments and questions are always welcome. Discuss!