OK, I’ll play too. The status quo is already in place with a rule that says that mods can close threads that are too pointless. Surely then, the burden should lie with those people who are wanting to change the system and overturn the existing rule.
Nothing needs improving. That’s the point. The system works as it is. If someone wants to change the system, then they can show that there’s a benefit to the change to the system.
As for your example, you’re conflating a single post with a system of moderating. My question was how would the proposed policy improve the system of moderating, not how a single post improves the board.
That was my question to you. Would it be OK to have a lot of pointless threads on the first page of the forum? Would there be a point where it’s too much ever? If so, what would be that point?
That wasn’t anywhere near what I think was the worst case scenario. If you think that’s even close, you don’t post in a lot of other places. I was asking what the limits would be. You seem to be saying that it would never reach the limits. What makes you think that?
That seems like a slippery slope argument. As has been repeatedly noted, “junk” threads have a terrible survival rate. People ignore them and they disappear from view. So the problem should be self-correcting.
Now I’ll concede it’s possible for people to overwhelm the board. We could theoretically start opening dozens of junk threads every day. But this seems like a very remote possibility and certainly not one that needs pre-emptive action.
I’d say the best plan would be to let the membership weed out too pointless threads by collective neglect. My guess is that this alone would control the problem. But if it does not and at some future point we actually have a problem of too many overly pointless threads cluttering up the MPSIMS forum then the moderators can step in and weed it out.
Sorry – busy day at work, I haven’t been able to participate in this thread.
I’m not going to respond to every point that everyone has made – it seems to me that both sides of the discussion are well represented. If you feel that you have raised some point that only I can address, and would like me to do so, please point out the post.
Let me repeat my original point: My problem is not with the level of pointfulness or its lack with the material that Little Nemo compiled but with the fact that he posted it without any kind of explanation or commentary at all. We discuss all kinds of stuff in MPSIMS, and I certainly have left way more “stupid” threads open than I have closed because of excessive pointlessness – I’d guess the numbers are, more or less, a bajillion to, say, three or four.
The threads that I close for excessive pointlessness have one thing in common: the OP provides some material – a cut and paste, as in this case, or a link – without providing any indication of why the OP is providing it. If the point is mind-reading, that’s a game and it should go in The Game Room. Otherwise, there should be some kind of indication, however cryptic or brief, from the OP as to why he or she has cut and pasted the material or provided the link. If you want to start a conversation, no matter how idle or desultory, you should provide a topic, not just wave vaguely in some direction and mime the possibility that there might be a topic yonder.
Anaamika’s candida thread meets that bare minimum, showing how low the bar is. Little Nemo’s thread did not.
The thread title is “What the SDMB is talking about”. I don’t understand why you can’t see that was the indication of why the OP is providing it. He summarized in one thread what we as a group are interested in (at this moment in time). Can you answer that?
I’m not being smartassy, I really thought that was an interesting post.
As I’ve said, I felt the “talk about this subject if it interests you” was implied. When somebody starts a thread with an OP saying it snowed outside their house last night (which I’ve seen happen) do they need to go on to explain that this thread is an opportunity for other posters to talk about the weather?
Annamika’s thread didn’t explain “The point of this thread is that Candida is a strange name. Discuss.” We were able to figure that out from the context of what she said.
Do we always have to have a tagline now that says something like “Your comments please”? That always seemed implied to me when somone posted a set of facts or a politician’s quote or a news item about some absurd rule in a school.
In this particular case, I read Little Nemo’s OP and wondered if there was some common thread that bound the most successful ones together. I didn’t find it. Now I’ve noticed one thing: None of them were quickly closed by a moderator.
Different people think in different ways. It’s not a matter of intelligence. We have some mods who just don’t see the potential that others do.