Number of new posts when you come back to SDMB

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

There have been a few times when I wasn’t able (for one reason or another) to log into SDMB for a few days, so this isn’t about those long times between visits. (In those cases there are dozens of pages to have to cope with.) I try to get here at least once a day and to scan the titles anyway of all the “New Posts” as they appear on the Forums Home Page. If there’ve been a bunch of threads I have participated in, I may do a search on my UserName to select just those threads to look at.

What this OP is about, though, is that If I go away for a short time, say less than an hour, there will usually not be more than two new pages of posts to go through. The longer I hang around the bigger the number of pages gets until it’s up around 12-15 pages. It can build to that number of pages in just an hour or two if things are popping.

Sometimes, if I’ve been through the list several times without finding some new threads to go into (at least to read), I will “log out” and wait a little while and “log back in” just to reduce the number of pages to have to mess with.

In any case, if I go away for over 12 hours, when I come back there will almost always be 15-18 pages of new things to investigate. Rarely less, rarely more. Not much more than if I had hung around for 3-4 hours.

I deduce from this set of data that at any one time (within a few days anyway) there’s only a rather small interest span. Just the threads getting action for that few days (maybe just a few hours) will get new posts. As time passes, some of them will lose their activity and fade into the dead thread category. Some will get random additions and work up to a post count in the 20’s. A handful will get hardly any replies. (Some of mine never got the first reply, but that’s not what I’m concerned with here.)

My main point is that there seems to be a mood to the board at any given time. Some topics are hot, others are not. It may be the time for some hot news item(s), some recent celebrity death(s), some TV show or movie that’s all the rage, or it may be the time for nonsense. But whatever the mood is, the time for it seems to last less than two weeks at any one go.

A rare few threads will get over 100 posts and will stay active for longer than a week. Right now (and I haven’t counted them – just guessing) there are only about 10-20 active threads with large post counts.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that threads started on the weekend (like this one) rarely have much activity once the work week is underway. The “vice versa” also seems to apply.

Wonder why that is. Have you noticed stuff like this?

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You don’t have to search to find threads you’ve posted in. Check the Email Notification box before you submit your post, or click the Subscribe to this Thread box after you post. Then, you can go to Control Panel (user cp) and new posts for only those threads are listed.

3

Thanks for helping this over the “0 replies” hump. NoClueBoy. And thanks for the tip.

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I definitely notice the “weekday crowd” vs. “nights and weekends” thing. I can’t really peruse much at work so when I get home there’s a bunch of posts to read from people I don’t have a lot of contact with. I guess it works the opposite way with people who only have internet access at work.

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Just as a case in point, this morning, after roughly 18 hours away, I came in to 17 pages of new posts.

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It really shows up in GQ. A weekday question is usually about things we run across in everyday life, and the answers are to the point. Weekend Qs seem to focus on the theoretical and the answers can be long and divergent.

As to the long threads, in any forum… An attractive topic gets a flurry of instant activity, and then settles down to a few Dopers continuing for a while. An intersting topic may sit there for a while, and then it suddenly becomes attractive. Intriguing topics don’t get bursts of activity, but they get periodic replies over a long period of time.

The ultra long threads are a very odd phenomenon. They get several pages long within a matter of hours, remain widely popular for well over a week, and then are carried along by a core group with hit and runners. No rhyme or reason as to why a thread goes over 1K posts, it seems to me. Being a game helps, but even that isn’t a guaruntee for ultra longlinessitudeness.

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NoClueBoy, your “Predict the next poster” thread appears to be one of the latest of these (for lack of a better word) “fad threads” floated along by the core group. One I started a few weeks back (This thread is just about this thread) had similar features. And the “non sequitur” thread also fit that bill. There have been many of these that I’ve looked in on and not posted to, just for the amusement. Others of them I have simply not cared to check out.

This raises another little point: of to 40,000+ people who could be checking out posts and threads, with or without contributing to them, do we have a “core group” who are just into nonsense or “fun and games” as a main reason to be involved? Is all it takes for one of these “runaway threads” to get going is a new breed of nonsense?

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Not neccessarily nonsense. I’ve had some threads, like the odd toys, beautiful airplanes, problems about SW, go for several pages based on discussion only.

Many of the nonsense type or game threads have a unique feature: conversation. Like our ultra long Trek Doper threads or my odd Predict thread. In addition to whatever the thread was about in the first place, the core group uses it for IM like interaction.

Let’s not forget the long time threads, too. dougie monty has a story thread that’s about to have a birthday. It started last November and is still going. Sometimes, it sits for a few days without a new post, but it never dies.

Coldfire’s 1945 thread is another example. It strikes a cord with a new group periodically. So, it lives.