Except for some of the game threads that can continue to draw responses for several days, and some of the hotter Pit threads where the battles wage for long spans of time, and the occasional GQ that requires many layers of explanation, or the GD topic that draws in almost everybody who ever contributed to a debate, it strikes me that CS, MPSIMS, IMHO and maybe ATMB threads burn themselves out in a manner of days at the most.
With the “don’t revive the zombie” consideration lurking behind us, the same topics get being recycled as new thread topics when in many cases several links to older threads would show that the “new” topic is one that’s been around almost forever.
As this thread is starting off in MPSIMS, it has the potential fate of going maybe a day or two and then dropping off the radar – if it even gets any replies!
But I’m wondering if enough salient topics get sprinkled about in this thread and enough effort is put to keeping it alive, if we might be able to make this an exception to the rule.
One potential sub-topic right off the bat would be “When will the last post in this thread be made?”
Another side topic (there’s no such thing as a hijack as far as this thread goes) could be a listing of threads in these four fora that have lasted longer than, say, five days. Some measure of caution could be employed before listing the game threads and the post parties and whatever other label applies. I’m suggesting threads that are at least semi-serious. Things along the lines of:
Point well taken. And I would want to exclude true zombie threads that went months to years between the last contemporaneous post and the “new” one(s) that most likely got the thread closed.
In a round-about way, I’m asking for some help in locating threads that managed to keep a topic going for much longer than the typical few days that threads appear to have as a “normal life span.”
It’s no big problem to sort the threads I have participated in and check the start date and last date, even if it is somewhat time-consuming. And I’m not really curious enough to start doing that for all threads in these fora.
But if others can remember such threads, I am at least interested in seeing what kept them going.
Thanks. You’ve hinted at another indicator of such a thread: many individual posters without one or two seeming to dominate the posting. In a large number of the ones I have checked (including ones where I was a heavy participant) you have two to five who run the post count up and maybe a few dozen who only post once or twice.
I would hope the longer-lasting threads would have a better distribution of contributing posters.
I get it. Garden variety Tough Love, so to say. I tend to avoid giving advice I have trouble following myself. That goes for most everything except “be careful what you say” sorts of things.
So to remove any heavy connotations that watching might expose you to, you could go with Weight Noticers as a more passive (and thus fitting in with the current administration’s “mistakes were made”) approach. Maybe there are some even less-committal turns of phrase for such a thing.
I hate long running threads. I mostly use the New Posts feature to read the Dope, and there are times when I’d really rather see new threads than the same old stupid long running circle jerk threads over and over. I wish there was an Ignore Thread feature, and if enough people use it on a particular thread, then the thread gets closed, kind of like voting someone off American Idol or something.
