I believe you have a point there Hugh, and i think it’s just as applicable (okay, maybe slightly less, seeing as the percentage of the population that knows about LOTR is much higher than that percentage which knows about Diablo II) to the Diablo thread.
That being said, the idea of a “Diablo Thread, Part 2” sounds like a perfectly acceptable solution to me. It keeps everything concentrated into one active thread, and has the side benefit of archiving the old stuff after a certain amount of time. Since all members should have access to the search feature, even if there are 10 or 20 archives it wouldn’t be hard to find “that one post a long time ago about _______”. I don’t think it matters whether it’s automatic or self-regulated – if the Powers state that threads longer than 30 pages slow the server down too much, i’m sure we will have no issues with diligently starting a new thread every 30 pages and asking a mod politely to close the old one. We all want to see the message boards run smoothly, and we’re happy to have the opportunity to discuss our pasttimes here.
I have just started a temporary D2 thread in Cafe Society for us to converse in until some sort of resolution is handed down from upon high. Also, it has instructions for irc, since i’ve set up a temporary irc channel for us until this comes to a resolution
I don’t think you bear full responsibility for that. Remember from my original link that there was already a Pit thread about the thread, so others have noticed it, too – and they complained, whereas you were just curious.
Jerry the Tech God won’t be able to get back to me until next week.
So, in the meantime, I ask your forebearance. IF the long thread is not a drag on the hamsters, we’ll presumably re-open it. If it is, then we’ll leave it closed and you’ll have to start a new one. OK?
That suggests to me that a lot more people than usual registered that month just to see the LotR thread, but your statistic is meaningless unless you also provide data how many members registered in Jan 2003 compared to the average month.
It’s probably meaningless anyway; there are more ways of finding things out than Slashdot. I registered with SDMB for the LotR thread, and as you can see that was in December 2002.
The LotR thread was started on10-10-2002. For a graph of the numbers, look at the blue bars on this chart for the registration counts and the blue line on this chart for the subscription rate.
It is, of course, practically impossible to know the reason behind every member’s registration or how one first hears about the SDMB, and thus we can’t say for absolutely sure that “x users registered for LotR, and y later became subscribers.” The membership spike (from chart 1) in January 2003, though, suggests a large post-slashdot inrush to me (I can’t figure out what happened in March, unfortunately), and compared to that, very few people stayed around to subscribe.
The word from On High is that thread length is no longer an issue for board performance.
I have consequently combined the last couple of Diablo2 threads into one long (41 pages and counting) thread, and re-opened it.
Of course, excessively long threads tend to be a disincentive for newcomers to read or join in – heck, in the time it takes to read a thread that long, I coulda read Carl Sandburg’s biography of Abraham Lincoln. However, that’s a matter of courtesy and accessability, and not one of Board Performance.
