Is the “6 Billion?” thread in Great Debates (494 posts) the longest to have occured?
Nope. The “Guy Stuff” thread started by UncleBeer went 1113 posts before it was closed. I think there are others, but I don’t know another one off the top of my head (or the bottom, for that matter).
The new software gets kinda wierd after 10 pages (500 posts), so threads are usually closed at about that size lately.
Jim
In a word, no, but it’s darn near as big as a thread can get under vBulletin. If a thread goes over ten pages (at 50 posts per page, that’s 1 OP and 499 replies), the board will continue to accept new replies, but you’ll have a devil of a time trying to read them. We know this because a few threads have, in fact, gone over that amount, so they have this particular thread beat. The standard procedure in such a case is for the mods to close the thread in question and start a sequel. For a few threads, such as Esprix’s popular “Ask the Gay Guy”, this has happened multiple times, so the discussion now fills three or more threads.
One recent memorable one was Threadkillers 2001! - 1111 replies Jester Last Post 01-11-2001 03:45 PM MPSIMS
Oh, so that’s why there’s sometimes a “I,” “II,” “III,” etc. I thought people just did that sponantiously when a thread got so long as to take too long to load, and to get to the page one wants.
I noticed that the “6 Billion” thread is kind of messed up. It has a number of blank posts, posted by no one. And when someone quotes an earlier post, it doesn’t have neat lines and bold text, it instead has the non-functioning instructions for such things. Is that a result of length? Or age? Do old threads start degrading, or something?
The blank posts and mangled code are a result of the Great Conversion nearly a year ago. We used to use the UBB software, but then last spring, we switched to vBulletin. Minor quirks crept in to all of the threads which were created under UBB. Another one you may notice is that some posts in some threads end up in the wrong order, so the OP will be halfway down the page.
About the Guy Stuff thread.
Who was the Original Poster? (Or should that be the Original Gangster?) I remember someone else-- not UncleBeer-- as the OP. If you actually open the thread UncleBeer is not the OP. Is this just me? Does it have to do with the Great Conversion?
I think it was either Uke, Chief, or Unc. ::shrugs::
I’m thinkin Chief, because I think I remember the OP being something like “Here’s your thread for posting about Guy Stuff” or something.
–Tim
I’m sure the OP was UncleBeer. When you open it, the first post is by Uke at 1:00 PM on 11-05-99. The second one is Persephone opening a bag of Cheese Poofs.
But if you look on the 2nd page down about 15 post, you will find this post by UncleBeer at 12:00 AM on 11-06-99. He said:
That is the Original Post. About 12 posts later you’ll see when Persephone shows up with the Cheese Poofs. That whole section should go at the beginning.
The thread got caught in one of those many times that the server was rebooted and the time was set wrong. It was set to PM instead of AM and no one noticed till the day changed at noon which was when UncleBeer actually started the thread. The conversion scrambled it pretty good.
I’m pretty sure of all this. If you read ‘The Death of “Guy Stuff”’ you can tell that Unc started it as a joke about the girl stuff thread.
Jim