I strongly agree with the decision by engineer_comp_geek to merge these two threads. (Post 13)
I just don’t like that only two mods conferred. If you’re trying out some completely new moderation, I think all the mods should be on board. I don’t like this penchant to treat each of the subforums as separate boards, with the mods having their own little fiefdoms.
I don’t really care about the thread closing. I don’t think it really matters at all. People in the new thread will expect people to be aware of things posted in the old thread, since it’ll mostly be the same people.
The only reason I see to do this is because Tapatalk starts to choke on threads that are too large. But that’s something that should be decided boardwide–create a limit to the number of pages.
I’ve never had a problem with Tapatalk handling big threads. In what way?
With all due respect and I hate to be Mr Archivist, but you did participate in the Trump campaign thread. You posted stuff on page 20 and over the next couple of months until page 108. So is 110 pages your cut off?
People who see those threads generally know they are long rambling things. Very few people are afraid to participate because their point might have been raised 3 months ago. I’ve never seen anyone get grief for it either unless the point was brought up within a page.
Regardless, the decision here seems a little ad hoc. “Me and tom talked it over and this thread is coming to it’s natural end. So we’re killing it.”
There was one equally stupid decision to close a long-running thread. It was a Diablo (the game) thread and a sock either started it or posted heavily in it. It was like 40-50 pages (with max replies per page) when it got closed with the (stupid) mod admonition that we all should have known better than to post to a thread that was started by (?) a sock. Sadly, the thread had a ton of then useful info.
I don’t post in the megathreads but I read them, and I prefer the continuity of a single thread over having to jump from thread to thread to thread.
Although voting is meaningless on the Dope regarding moderation, I vote “leave the damn threads open”. If someone wants to start a new one, let the marketplace decide: Start it and if enough people are sick of the old one, they’ll jump over and the old one dies. If not, the new one dies a natural death.
I hate this new heavy-handed “Let’s control the flow of the conversation” style modding.
There have been threads shut down in the past for length. esprix’s popular “Ask the Gay Guy” thread, for instance, would regularly be closed and sequel threads created. We were told, I recall that long threads caused problems with indexing and put a strain on the sever, although if this was true, or 9 true now, I couldn’t say.
Sorry for the delay in answering. Debates.
Think of this as an experiment. Earlier this year it was floated that we should have a new thread each month to allow for jumping on points and such. I was in favor of it - and Tom and I discussed it at the time - but it didn’t take off.
I want to see how such things go in terms of participation and such. I don’t think I’m telling anyone any revelation to say that the longer a thread goes the more it appears to become a shouting match between hostile camps. It’s my hope that changing things up may make it easier for new people to come on board.
So let’s see how it goes and we’ll start to learn something.
Well if you expect a shiny new thread to create a influx of new posters, I think you’re likely to be disappointed. But the reasoning tomndebb gave in the Trump thread:
Could be accomplished by simply announcing you weren’t going to moderate conflation of the two campaigns for the remainder of the election. But I guess that if there is even a small chance that a new thread will cease the hostile shouting and welcome in a golden age of being welcoming to newcomers I suppose we need to try it. Good luck with that.
Not to the thread, but to the conversation.
The argument against megathreads is that they’re too bloated and nobody wants to participate in them.
So the answer is to take two megathreads and combine them into a single megathread which will have twice as much* posting? It’s going to be pages and pages long within a week or two. Will that one be shut down after a certain length of time or number of posts? There’s a lot of weeks left in the election.
*probably closer to 150% since there is definitely overlap between the two threads.
I just want to see them merged to see the unholy mess of a conversation it creates.
Closing them and opening another one is the least bad solution. If you leave them open then you’ll need to follow at least two, possibly three, threads on the general presidential election. If you close them you’ll only need to follow one (other than additional offshoot threads people might make from time to time.)
Here’s the problem with that. Let us say on page 32 some Mod cam in and issued a Moderator rule.
You didnt read that page, so you post and violate that rule.
You can be warned.
This is why threads need to be ended and new ones started once they get too long.
I strongly disagree with this argument. For one thing, I see no evidence that this is actually a significant problem. How many examples can you provide to demonstrate frequent occurrences of this specific issue in long threads?
Once threads get longer than a few thousand posts, they are unmanageable from a readers point of view. Subtopics jump around and it’s difficult to follow a thought with intervening posts discussing other issues.
Same thing with that shooting omnibus thread in the pit. You spend more time trying to determine which shooting each post is talking about than following the thought.
I applaud the decision. Overly broad threads should be dealt with by execution when they have reached such a point.
In fairness, the #2 contributor to that thread was elucidator (I was #3), but you probably have a point since after Bricker stopped posting to it, it wound down and has now been dormant for a week. Probably most threads will boil down to extended arguments among a handful of users, though the SRIOTD thread is getting steady injections of new Republican silliness, which is why I keep an eye on it because I find that sort of thing amusing.
Heck, it must be possible to program vBulletin so that when a thread is only getting steady contributions from, say five or fewer users, it can automatically shunted off to another forum called (for the sake of argument) “Side Discussions”. That way, the discussion can continue for those who are active in it and the new users not burdened with it in the main fora.
Or, for that matter, do this automatically with any active thread over one year old.
I think we call that forum Thread Games. 
Well-played.
If you are the one being warned, it only has to happen *once. *
The mods made this rule about “following a moderators instructions” , a bannable offense.
As long as we have that rule, threads need to end after a reasonable length.
What do you consider a reasonable length?