I tried to reset the thread to normal but the usual way to do that didn’t show — are you sure that’s available to the OP? I didn’t think to try muting it; I don’t usually use that function so it didn’t occur to me. Can you mute a thread that Discourse thinks you started?
That would be annoying! But as Aspenglow points out, it’s also pretty easy to fix.
Yes, I’ve done it lots of times.
See just above; we posted close to simultaneously. — twice!
Thanks, if it happens again I’ll try the mute technique.
I bet you just hit some random glitch. Try creating a new thread somewhere, dm me to tell me where it is, and I’ll post a few times to it. Then try to mute it or make it “normal”, and I’ll post another time or two. (But maybe tomorrow, I’m heading to bed.)
Definitely.
Definitely tomorrow, so am I!
Apparently, it allows you to add to or edit a thread without bumping it
or notifying the OP or participants.
(Don’t know why it’s called “Toggle” - that suggests some on/off type action)
If your post isn’t worth discussion, it’s not worth posting.
Seriously, if that’s the case, just don’t post anything. That’s an actual thought process I’ve gone through… “I think this is too much off-topic, so I should create a spin-off thread, but I don’t think it’s interesting enough for its own thread, so I’m not even going to bother posting anything.” And that’s okay too.
Well, that’s even worse then.
You’ve just given me a feature that’s excessive in 95% of cases, for where I just want to get a clarification, dig into a question with a particular person, etc., and in the 5% where I actually do feel like we need to birth a whole new thread on a topic, based on something that someone said, I’m still on the hook to create that thread and figure out how to pack everything that was in the old one over into the new one.
So what does slack do that’s different?
It adds a little pocket universe into the main thread, where those who are interested can dive in and file through on the tange
No, you don’t have to figure out how to pack anything into the new thread.
If you start a linked thread as recommended above, it automatically includes a link to the one you started from.
And vice versa. Look upthread a few posts to @puzzlegal ’s post #105 where I did that. I didn’t have to enter either of those links; it was automatic.
Yeah, the OP can literally just be whatever you would have posted if it was a standard reply in the original thread. The only thing “extra” is just picking a name for the thread. And since it links back to the original thread, and it can even link back to a specific post in the thread, all of the connection is done for you. And that link goes both ways; the post you started the new thread from, as a reply, has a link to the new thread. And the new thread OP has a link back to the original.
Here is a real example of one I did just a couple of weeks ago:
That whole OP was originally going to be a reply in a P&E thread, but I was worried that going into what kind of drones were needed to drop bombs would be too much of a tangent. And since it was no longer about anything political, but was just about technology, I decided to put it in a different category other than P&E. But really, all I did was choose to “Reply as linked topic” to a post rather than a normal reply, changed the category, gave it a thread title, and posted the same thing I was going to post as a reply in the original thread. It wasn’t much more of a hassle than a normal reply. And there was no technical reason for changing the category; it will default to the category you are already in, that was just a choice I made.
I don’t agree with this. The vast majority of anyone’s posts get 1 or 2 replies, and a simple majority get none. That doesn’t mean what they said isn’t interesting. And any post you make might be an outlier.
That’s what I think is relevant: do you think what you said is interesting? Then post it. If not, don’t. Maybe people will agree and reply. Maybe they’ll agree and not reply. Maybe they won’t agree, but you’ll never know if you don’t try.
I would argue this is a key part of the hijack issue. People don’t assume that what they say will get a bunch of replies. Either they think they can make a one-off “interesting trivia” type of post, or you have this pattern: someone makes an on-topic post that contains a relevant bit. That bit gets focused on in a reply. Other people find that little bit the more interesting aspect of the original topic. Eventually you’re just off topic, but none of you think that your post was a “thread starter” and pulling in the entire hijack to a new OP takes work. So no one wants to do it.
Sure, there’s a link. But most people aren’t going to go back to the thread and try to find all the posts that led to the current one. There’s a reason mods move the entire discussion out.
If you do it yourself, the only way to make sure people see the discussion is to quote all relevant posts.
If your post risks derailing a thread, because it’s a major tangent, but it’s not worth its own discussion, then it’s not worth posting (if it’s in a category and/or thread where people are supposed to be staying on topic). That is what I meant, because again, that’s what this thread is about.
For example, someone is talking about a politician in a thread, and that politician quotes a poet, and you want to add a reply talking about that poet’s work, if it’s not worth discussing that poet then it’s not worth posting anything at all. If it is worth a discussion, start a new thread about that poet; and you can even reply as a linked topic so you can start about how some newsworthy politician quoted them recently.
But your outlier, off-topic post is absolutely not worth posting in the original thread. I think the idea that it is, that’s part of the problem that this thread is about.
@BigT: That won’t make it sure, either; people may just skip over all those posts even if you quote them.
If I thought the full context of the posts in the originating thread was essential, I’d just say in the new one ‘please read posts # through # in the originating thread at the link for context.’ And then expect that not everyone would.
I’m not a mod; but I think the reason they move all those posts out isn’t to improve understanding of the last one in line, but because they don’t want any of them in the originating thread; if only because leaving them there may start the whole hijack all over again.
@thorny_locust (sorry, tagged the wrong post)
Finding the posts takes the same amount of time and is the same extra work. And either posts will be necessary or you will have to write a different post than the one you originally wanted to write. A post made in a conversation will inherently be different than one made to start a conversation.
The thing is, it doesn’t have to be much extra work. Just enough that posting in the thread is the lower friction option. The question is why people do things, and people aren’t consciously thinking about it at all.
That’s not how thread conversations work. Post the thread elsewhere and most people won’t even look at it, much less respond. How “worth discussion” it is doesn’t matter.