How many post long, does a thread have to go before everyone stops reading the book of comments we’ve created.
I imagine at some point, most of us will be reading the first page and last few comments and saying something based on that.
What about all the glorious info inbetween!!!
I think this question is more about our message board than a clasic General Question, so let’s move it to ATMB from GQ.
samclem Moderator, General Questions
The answer, my friends, is blowing in the winds…
The answer depends on the moderator and the forum. Typically, a thread can amass well over a dozen pages before it’s closed, and by that point it is indeed better to start a new thread or threads, if only to account for topic drift. As you imagine, long threads get very difficult to wade through in a single sitting, and people do tend to focus on the first and last pages.
If you’re asking about the behavior of ordinary readers, then of course the answer is “it depends.”
It’s considered good manners to read through even a long thread before posting to it. Long threads tend to narrow the base so that a few posters are doing most of the responses, having gone through all of the back and forth. It’s really insulting to them to come in and post something obvious that has been thoroughly covered several pages before.
Because this is the Internet and we get a wide swath of personality types, some people will do this this. Other people will then comment on it. And that drives the thread even longer, ironically.
Because the Dope is closer to a community than many other sites that just get random posters, it’s probably less likely that long threads here get only the first and last posts read before somebody comments. Lurkers may skip the middle just to get the flavor of why a thread grew long, but they usually then check back before they post.
BTW, we got the option several years ago to set the number of posts on a page at up to 200. A lot of people don’t seem to know this judging by how many times I see references to 50-post pages.
It very much varies. If you’re posting in a GQ thread, you’re pretty much expected to read the whole thread before replying. That saves us from getting long strings of people posting pretty much the same thing.
On the other hand, if you look at something like the World of Warcraft thread in the Game Room, with 11,804 replies and over 314,098 views, I don’t think anyone would expect you to read the whole thing. It’s just a bunch of fans chatting about the game we enjoy in common, so it doesn’t really matter if some of the comments repeat.
I very much like the Dope, people here tend to really put some thought into what they say. And many like to keep coming back to post new ideas on the same threads. I feel like I’m chatting with a bunch of people I really like to hang out with all the time…
STMB IS THE BEST. STMB = AWESOMENESS…
There must some ulterior motive here. Whatever it is, you had me at DOPE.
If you really like us, please do us the courtesy of spelling our name right. It’s SDMB.
I mean that friendly even though it sounds a bit snarky.
He may have been talking about the Stones Throw Message Board. They have much more awesomeness than us.
Have you ever looked a dope thread? I mean really looked at it. It’s got fingers and shit. Fingers that can grasp beautiful colors.