Now that we know who Harris picked for her running mate, it would be great to have a thread to discuss it. So I went looking for a thread and found this, “Harris VP choice for 2024 is Governor Tim Walz Minnesota.”
The news is just a few hours old as I write this, so imagine my surprise to see in excess of 1,400 posts! I was disappointed, because I thought, “gosh, I’m not going to wade through that many posts - I’m impressed there were so many in so short a period of time.”
Well, that’s not what happened. A perfectly fine thread about OPTIONS for Harris to pick that was posted over 2 weeks ago has had its title updated.
Why can’t we have a NEW thread? The landscape is different now - we’re not discussing possible candidates, we HAVE a candidate.
And now I feel I can’t post, because I haven’t kept up with the old thread, and I know it’s poor form to post in a thread where you haven’t read most of it.
I don’t like this, I want a fresh thread for Harris’s VP pick.
I would do it, but not with the existing title on the old thread. It needs to be changed back first, for the sake of clarity.
(And before anyone complains that I should have started a thread immediately, remember I am in Hawai’i and was probably asleep when the news came in - we’re a bit behind the rest of the country, news-cycle-wise).
Also, not to be obstreperous, (a phrase that virtually guarantees that something obstreperous is to follow; apologies in advance), I’m not sure why a one-sentence OP would be closed. Are you really saying that if I posted “Well, the decision has been made and I’m curious what Dopers think: Harris has chosen a pretty progressive running mate.”
Being more prone to verbosity than terseness, I’d most likely say more. But I see nothing wrong with the one sentence (including a link which I’m not bothering with here).
That’s the one I meant. Seems like now it is the run up to the Harris Walz campaign. Certainly talking about his impact on the campaign seems appropriate there to me.
Will Walz be of individual note going forward after another day or two? Vance’s been folding slow train derailment is, but in that regard Walz is no Vance!
Okay, I started a thread. But I feel as though it is confusing and responses will be split between the old thread and the new one. Or the old thread will simply continue under the new (and misleading for the first thousand-plus posts!) name, and my thread will die.
I don’t take it personally if my thread dies, but I AM disappointed by the fact we can’t discuss Walz with a clearly fresh start.
ETA: and you closed the older thread and directed them to the new one as well - that will definitely avoid confusion, while allowing people to follow the links to read their preferred thread. Thanks!
Unfortunately, it didn’t for me. When I came back to the forum earlier, the title of the familiar thread I had been participating in was nowhere to be found. There was a similar thread, but it was now closed.
If I may offer a respectful suggestion, I don’t think this was the right way to do things. I could be wrong, but I thought that the original title (something like “Who will be Kamala Harris’ VP running mate?”) had been changed to something like “Who will be Kamala Harris’ VP running mate? {Tim Walz confirmed}” and then changed again to “Harris VP choice for 2024 is Governor Tim Walz Minnesota”. I’m not remembering the title names exactly, but I think that was the gist of it.
I thought it was pretty clear that the original “who will it be?” thread had morphed into a discussion about Tim Walz now that it was official. It’s too late now, but that would have been the best place to continue the VP discussion, matching what happens in other threads when speculation turns to fact and then the thread continues with a discussion of the new developments. The last thread title change may have caused some confusion but otherwise that’s routinely been how discussions on developing news continue.
Instead, we’ve lost continuity because the original thread is closed, and we have a new thread with one of the oddest thread titles I’ve ever seen (“A thread started shortly after Harris’s choice of Walz as VP”). IMHO, though it’s too late now, it would have been better to just leave everything alone and carry on the discussion in the original thread in which many posters had made useful contributions both before and after Walz was officially announced, which is exactly what was already happening.
Maybe there’s no perfect solution that will satisfy everyone, but why is it so important to have a “fresh start” when there’s already a thread with a lot of posts and a lot of momentum, including recent post-announcement commentary, on pretty much the exact same topic? I think continuity is much more important than strict categorization, and as I said, threads about developing news events frequently evolve organically as the events evolve. But I speak as someone who had been posting in the original thread. If you haven’t been, I can see that you’d have a different perspective.
“Who will be chosen as Harris’s running mate” is absolute NOT the same topic as “Wow - Harris chose Walz!”
YMMV, and I’m mellow if it does. “Joy” and “neighbors” and “moving forward” seem to be the Harris-Walz talking points - let’s focus on those. Sure, I appreciate that “no perfect solution will satisfy everyone.” I’m cool with that and if you find the move to a new thread irritating, okay - I accept why that’s legit.
Can we now move forward with celebrating the Harris VP pick in a new thread? I don’t think that harms anyone.
As you say, YMMV. I guess a lot depends on how invested one feels in the original thread. But one example of a thread that is an exact parallel that morphed in exactly the way I described and is still one thread is, for instance, “Who will be Trump’s running mate? (J. D. Vance Has Been Chosen)”, currently at 1151 posts.
Absolutely! I think Walz was a great choice and I’m thrilled with it and I said so*, and Harris-Walz is a fantastic team!
This is not a big deal and sorry if I made it seem like one. But maybe there’s a discussion to be had some other time about when a completely new thread is or is not justified.
A difference is that there was fairly little mass in that thread from before Vance was chosen. I am also a participant in the closed thread (the OP actually) and I also support a fresh start. Massive threads are intimidating to new participants. The current title though? Dunno.
Well, there were 410 posts from before Vance was announced. That was more than a third of the whole thread the last time I looked.
I don’t see why, and we have several threads that have blown through the 10,000 post Discourse limit and are now at least in their second incarnation. I don’t think anyone feels an obligation to read thousands of posts before participating in a thread, and even if they did, reading hundreds of posts is just as unrealistic. My own approach, if I haven’t already been following and participating in a thread, is generally to read enough recent posts to get a sense of the current conversation.
If the general consensus here is that a fresh start is the way to go when there’s a major change in a situation, then I’m fine with that. Personally I tend to place a high value on continuity, and see more downside than upside in effectively losing all the previous contributions that may still have value and add important context, but if the majority see it differently, I’m cool with that.
I think Walz was a great choice and I’m thrilled with it and I said so*, and Harris-Walz is a fantastic team!