Some of us have discussed creating a Zimmerman trial thread for news reports, daily trial links, and other coverage. Links only. Any comments on the case should go in the existing imho thread. A month long trial will generate almost daily coverage and a lot of links.
Comments on this case tend to run very long. The thread is already 219 pages long and the trial hasn’t even begun. Any links posted in there will get buried in the verbiage.
Can we get a pinned thread in mundane? That way it’s at the top and visible. Hopefully we won’t get repetitive threads on the topic. It could be unpinned after the trial.
The 219 page thread has rarely ever dropped below the first 10 threads in MPSIMS - how much more visible do you think it needs to be? Maybe we could have the admins send an email alert to every account to notify people of its existence, just in case someone hasn’t noticed it.
<shrug> Collecting all the trail links in one place could be helpful to other members. It’s something I’ll do for myself anyhow in a local document on my desktop. The verbiage in the imho thread is just staggering. Any links in there are buried deep. It would take a hour or two of scrolling to ever find them.
Anyhow it was just an idea to consider. The trial will probably be one of the summers biggest news stories.
Reading this thread, I don’t think it’s about the thread itself dropping out of sight, but an individual post linking to a news report quickly being swamped by all the discussion going on in the thread.
Yeah, that’s the concern. It’s absolutely pointless to waste time posting a news link that will get buried two or three pages deep in a day. Those Zimmerman posts get really long. I posted a link to a book on the case that just came out Friday and it’s already deeply buried and forgotten. Total waste of my time.
We’ve talked about that. If it’s cool with the mods then we’ll give it a try. Daily trial updates should keep the thread pretty high up in Mundane. We may get a knucklehead once in awhile that dumps commentary in the thread. But the thread title should make it clear that the thread is for links only.
If TPTB wanted to live dangerously, they could deputize a member whose sole responsibility would be to politely delete commentary from threads explicitly devoted to news linking. No need to add snark.
Forum: Newslinks
More generally, newslink threads arguably aid in the fight against ignorance. If they gain sufficient popularity, we could dedicate a new forum to them. Each might have a link to a corresponding discussion thread in the OP. Over at the lesser trafficed Unaboard, I find the monthly Space, Science and Tech threads rather diverting. Here, I assume that the topics would have a narrower focus, corresponding to the greater membership.
Forum: Newslinks and Ongoing Discussions
If judged appropriate, we might broaden the forum to include ongoing discussion threads, if users found it convenient to reference the paired threads in the same forum. That’s a bit of a solution is search of a problem though. While the Oots thread could go there, “Stupid Republican/Democrat Idea of the Day” would presumably stay in the pit.
I’d be all for it, because that thread is next to useless at the moment. It’s too full of people arguing before they had any information.
If you don’t do a news thread, at least do an “informed speculation thread” to get it away from the acrimony of the original thread. Everyone in that thread is as mad at each other as a GD thread. Actually, I’m not entirely sure why it wasn’t moved to GD, since apparently this is a very contentious issue with people assuming the other side is either racist or stupid. People aren’t just sharing their opinions, but are villifying each other over said opinions.
That thread is popular because of a few people who won’t let it rest, not because everyone is reading it.
One would then expect there to be discussion about the book’s contents. Instead everyone is still discussing the same crap they were discussing before, repeated ad nauseum. Again, just like a typical GD thread.
Sorry for a third post, but I just noticed this: The thread has been around so long that it’s even marked as a zombie by the zombie Greasemonkey script. I mean, it started back in April of last year. Surely, with real information now that the trial is beginning, it’s worth making a new start for thread that old with over 11000 posts. I think we’d restart any other thread that big and that old. That’s 111 pages on default settings, I believe.