'part X' threads?

[Cthulhu]

Just a suggestion / thingy I think I've discussed with other people somewhere else a while ago.

The base idea is that, when a thread reaches a certain amount of posts, it's closed and a 'version 2.0' of the thread is started. There's a few reasons for such an idea:

* It gives a chance to re-create the first post of a long-running thread, in particular the ones that have a lot of discussion or information in them. The first post would be re-written by a member and would contain a lot of high-quality information about the thread itself. This information could contain the news about the topic at hand, a FAQ, links to information to those not initiated, imagery, rules of conduct / policy of the thread, assistance, etcetera. See here for a Dutch example of a long-running thread with 188 iterations. On there, threads are closed and re-created when they reach 1000 posts.

* It gives some performance benefits. Although this isn't much, I must add, and only applies to older forms of storage. On the site linked above, there's some topics asking about the 'close / v2.0' policy, and the staff in there stated that there's only a noticeable reduction in performance if a thread reaches 50.000 posts or more - which would equate to a thread with 3333 pages (in the default 15 posts / page setting) on here. So that's not really a factor to consider here.

I'd personally like to see a trial of this one. Here's a bit of a question / assignment: If you had to re-start a thread, how would you make its first post better?

Anyone have any other bright ideas? Opinions? This is just an idea btw, nothing definitive, .

 

[Username]

yeh give it a go on trial.

I'd personally like to see a trial of this one. Here's a bit of a question / assignment: If you had to re-start a thread, how would you make its first post better?

I have no other birght ideas, sorry

ps. this post has gone completly wrong cba to fix it.

 

[A]

Would this be for all threads, including the Chit Chat thread?

I dunno, it seems like there's no point to this. What the forum has right now is perfectly fine. And if we had to re-start a thread, I don't see how you make it's first post better - it is the same topic right? And plus, I don't think much cba to re-start a thread again and again.

 

[Alex]

I think it's a really good idea tbh. It gives the person that recreates the thread the ability to sum up the discussion thats already taken place and what had been concluded from it, and then to say 'right we have this conclusion now, where can we take the discussion from here based on what we got out of the last thread' which would be a much smarter way of stopping any topic from getting too scrappy.

* It gives some performance benefits. Although this isn't much, I must add, and only applies to older forms of storage. On the site linked above, there's some topics asking about the 'close / v2.0' policy, and the staff in there stated that there's only a noticeable reduction in performance if a thread reaches 50.000 posts or more - which would equate to a thread with 3333 pages (in the default 15 posts / page setting) on here. So that's not really a factor to consider here.

Basically somebody should just give staff a heads up when the Chit Chat thread reaches its 3332nd page then? :p

 

[Cookie Monster]

Sounds good. But it should be disabled for Chit Chat. With, the amount of activity that thread gets, there will be a new thread opening up every 5 minutes.

 

[Hawkeye.]

* It gives a chance to re-create the first post of a long-running thread, in particular the ones that have a lot of discussion or information in them. The first post would be re-written by a member and would contain a lot of high-quality information about the thread itself. This information could contain the news about the topic at hand, a FAQ, links to information to those not initiated, imagery, rules of conduct / policy of the thread, assistance, etcetera. See here for a Dutch example of a long-running thread with 188 iterations. On there, threads are closed and re-created when they reach 1000 posts.

Makes sense to me. It creates a clean slate for people that don't want to read through 1000 posts of a topic to be able to properly join in. Though doing it with the chit chat thread would be a pain more than anything else. So that one should be immune if this is implemented.

 

[Cat Rage Room]

An excellent idea, and many forums already do this. Go for it.

 

[Cthulhu]

Would this be for all threads, including the Chit Chat thread?

Could be, I dunno. It'd be kinda lulzy to have a history of Chit Chat threads though, so you can refer to 'CC v 3.0, page X'. A new first post wouldn't have much value to that one btw, but threads like the LTD could - summary of facts, FAQ on what's canon / fanon,

Spoiler

lesbian pr0n

, et cetra.

Spoiler

c wut I did thar?

Sounds good. But it should be disabled for Chit Chat. With, the amount of activity that thread gets, there will be a new thread opening up every 5 minutes.

Mmm, that thread would get a higher amount of posts before getting reopened, of course. It's got almost 800 pages now in its 5 month and somewhat existence, so I'd put that one at a thousand pages (= 15000 posts). That limit would probably be reached sooner as activity increases, but even then it'd take a few months before the limit was reached. That is, if we want to have this thingy for the chit-chat thread. I'm going to keep an eye out on page generation time in the chit-chat thread and other threads, see if there's a noticeable difference in performance. If the CC thread takes a considerable amount of time to view a page over other threads, then the performance point would kick in.

Seems there's some in favor, who's up for an experiment? Link to a thread and ask it to be closed in order to create a v 2.0, or create a new thread and request the old one to be shut.

Just make sure to link to the old topic in the new, and to the new in the old.

 

[Geostigma]

Duuuu eeet imo , sounds neat

 

[Cthulhu]

Link to a thread and ask it to be closed in order to create a v 2.0, or create a new thread and request the old one to be shut.

Just not Chit Chat, I've been requested to wait until page 1000 for that one .

 

[Cthulhu]

So, want to close / reopen the chit-chat thread now?

 

[Alex]

Go do it imo

 

[Cthulhu]

'kay.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Dunno, just seems kinda pointless for certain threads. Chit chat thread, What Are You Listening To, The Lifestream Member Picture Thread, etc, should be left alone.

The quality of content in such threads won't change by making a new one. Hell, in a couple of years we'll end up with 20 archived Chit Chat Threads. What's the point if you can just have it all in one? I think this feature would mostly work with threads with serious topics, like in the Gaming and FF sections, imho.

 

[Cthulhu]

There's also the performance to consider - the CC thread had 15.000 posts, which shouldn't be a problem yet, but 50.000 and more will / may start to give performance problems, resulting in higher page generation times. Dunno how much of a factor that is on vB though.

But eh, this is just an experiment really. It should also be tried with a more official thread, preferably one where creating a new and improved first post is worth something.

On that, we should try to promote writing good first posts for threads, with general information about the subject, frequently asked questions, imagery, etcetera.

And on good thread titles, too. I don't like threads with titles saying 'cthulhu fhtagn' that are about flamethrowers, not just because the title doesn't reflect the content of the thread, but also due to the search engine. Thread titles are counted the most when calculating the 'score' of a thread in search results, and as such should make sense, .

 

[Cthulhu]

*hump*

You lot want to keep the chit-chat threads to keep having numbered versions or should I just go ahead and merge the three?

 

[Ⓐaron]

Nah, I think numbered versions are fine.