I decided that this award needs to be handed out. Who on this board is most likely to end a threads life? Naturally, We’ll exclude the mods from this one, who can always have the last word, if they want it.
A search for all posts by my user names comes up with 750 theads. Out of those 750 , 125 of them have me as the final poster. So it would seem that 1 out of every 6 threads I post to will fade into the abyss with my insight (cough cough) as the final thoughts.
Or maybe it should be kills vs. post count. That has me at 125 kills to 1650 posts. Thats about one kill per 13 posts.
So lets see, who is most likely to kill off a thread?
If we exclude mods, then the borderline between a zombie that’s going to be closed by a mod once somebody replies to it way after the “last post” was made, and that “near zombie” that mods will let slide if a late post is made to it, is where somebody could get in a shot at “killing the thread” if he/she is willing to gamble that that borderline won’t be crossed.
Another way to go after it would be to figure out what the real borderline is between a “live thread” and a zombie is and just look for threads that haven’t been replied to within that zone and go post to them.
I suppose the best way to kill a thread though is either:
state the definitive answer to some legitimate topic or question
make the most inane comment possible
suck the last breath of life out of a dying topic
post the final hijack, just before a mod would step in to administer the coup de grace.
In all these cases, I submit, it’s a matter of blind luck.
I believe you’re right, Zeldar, whoever happens to be the final poster to a thread is pretty much blind luck. I don’t think anyone specifically goes around looking for near zombie threads they can snipe off, and definitive answers only really apply to GQ. Off the wall comments, I guess, kill more threads than anything.
In any case, I don’t intend for this thread to become point and laugh at whomever kills the most threads, branding them a worthless poster, just a kinda silly, humorous look at some posting trends. If I do happen to be the largest thread killer I can take it with the grain of salt I intended there to be.
I always thought I was a bit of a thread-killer (usually when I painstakingly decide to craft a long-winded post long after everyone else stopped caring), but I only amount to 50/750, or 6.5%. Not too bad, I guess.
In the month of June '06 alone, Dopers started 155 different threads that received zero replies. Think about that. That’s the ultimate threadkill experience right there.
This thread, on the other hand, might just stick around a while. Unless this post kills it, of course.
