Closing threads for length in the new babble

It's time to let threads die a natural death. If it's good enough for EnMasse and Bread and Roses...

I'm used to thread lengths of 100, and not just because I'm on a very slow dialup ISP. I remember really long threads on the other forums, and didn't like them at all.

Long threads are still a hassle for dial up, I do not go near the ones that have recently gone on to 130+ posts, as either half the page loads, and one has toi reload it and it takes forever to up load it.

And I do not like the pagentation format at all.

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"watching the tide roll away"

So how do EnMasse and Bread and roses manage to survive with threads longer than 100 posts/ Do they have better software?

They do pagenation,  which is dislikable.

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"watching the tide roll away"

I was once told that we are never allowed to compare Babble with EM or BnR. If Michelle finds out she's gona be pissed!

It would be interesting to know what percentage of babblers still have dial-up.  If it’s more than a single-digit percentage, I’d be surprised.

Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!! 

remind wrote:

Point? 

Does the closed-for-length policy remain in effect until absolutely no one has dial-up anymore?

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Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!! 

About 12% on canadians still use dial-up.

http://www.muchmormagazine.com/2008/06/more-canadians-hooking-up-to-fast... 

 ,----- [ quote ]
| The urban-rural divide was particularly pronounced when considering
| access to high-speed broadband internet. Over nine in 10 urban home
| users reported using a high-speed connection, compared with just over
| seven in 10 home users in rural areas.
|
| Access was an issue, with more than one-half of rural and small-town
| residents using a slower service saying that a high-speed telephone or
| cable service was not available in their area.

`-----

I use daio-up, even though wireless broadband is available now, but the price
differencial is $20/month for DU and $50/month for broadband.

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One struggle, many fronts.

Left Turn wrote:

I don't think we should close threads for length. I also think we need to keep the number of posts per page at or under 100 posts, for those who are on dial-up (which is not me). The only solution that satisfies both conditions, is pagination.

Michelle (or anyone else), before you chime in with your "pagination is not user friendly" line again, I want to assure you that pagination is user friendly on forum software such as smf. Michelle, you've always rejected pagination on the grounds that you have to go from page 1 to page 2, to page 3, ect., which is not true. If pagination is set up right, there will be a drop down menu at the bottom of the page, that will allow you to go from the current page, to any other page in the thread. So to go from page one to page 50, you will only require 1 page change, not 50. So I don't buy for one minute that it's some fact that pagination is never user friendly.

QFT

[IMG]http://i38.tinypic.com/1r9lpy.gif[/IMG]

It seems to me that all of the opposition to changing the 100 post rule come down to that being the culture of Babble.

remind wrote:

Many reasons, such as perusing each and every page that has many pages to make sure no one has posted what you want to post or discuss, sometimes entails thousands of posts. . . Loss of continuity from page to page . . . Best before happens usually by 100 posts, really no point in having 25+ pages of 25 posts per page lingering around. 

I agree with all remind's points, summarized above. For those who wish to go back to the previous thread, we normally link to it when a new one is started. Much cleaner than endless pages fading into the mists of time.

Sven wrote:

It would be interesting to know what percentage of babblers still have dial-up.

Don't know, but it's shrinking. Expensively; the urban half of our county has high-speed, but

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Bell Aliant and Xplornet have submitted bids . . . The expansion of service cost is estimated to be $3- million, with the provincial request being approximately $1-million. The financial impact for the county is $200,000, which is included in the 2008 budget. The remaining $2-million is private sector investment.

oldgoat wrote:

Seriously though, technicalities aside, I am of the strong belief that the policy of closing threads at about 100 posts is for the most part good for the flow of discourse.

I don't know how anyone can seriously say that with a straight face, let alone declare it as a "strong belief".

The flow of discourse is not something mechanical and predictable. It is determined by the participants themselves, in their almost infinite permutations. Some threads don't even start to become interesting until after the 80th post; some threads lie dormant for months or years with 65 posts, and then because of current events they get revived and a whole new discussion starts. Starting a new thread in that case would remove historical and informational context.

Some threads don't have much discussion at all, but are chock full of useful information and sources - e.g. the Afghanistan: Still Losing the War series, or some of the Climate Change threads. And some heated discussions go on for multiple threads - e.g. the Zimbabwe elections series or the Russia-Georgia series. Now anyone who wants to go back and find something in particular faces a massive research task reassembling those threads.

It should not be that way.

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This is based on over 7 years of posting here, and I also posted at a time when we did have pagenation. Others may have solid arguments to the contrary. The community was happy to see it go at the time BTW.

This is not the same community. This is not the same software. This is hardly even the same millennium.

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It will make it harder to moderate.

No moderator has ever been able to explain this statement to me. If it's easier for babblers to use pagination, then it should be easier for moderators to do so as well. Don't moderators face the same prioblems we do, having multiple unlinked threads on the same topic? What special concerns apply to moderators that don't apply to the rest of us?

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Now having said all of that, I just looked at the "Soldiers Hello" thread with a view to closing for length, and didn't, because I had the feeling I'd be halting a dynamic conversation at a bad time. That thread might need a moderators attention for other reasons because it's a bit heated, but I didn't want to close it with my usual line to start a new one if you want.

Bingo. You just proved my point.

The following is a real tagline. Please read it carefully, and then ask yourself: What useful thing could I have achieved in the ten seconds it took me to read and digest this material?

[/quote] [IMG]http://i38.tinypic.com/1r9lpy.gif[/IMG]

Quote:

Loss of continuity from page to page, where people step in and miss
what was said before because they did not read ALL the prior pages, so
duplication after duplication happens, or apologies if there could be
duplication before that was not checked, and/or accusations of
duplication occur time after time, which also break up the continuity.

I think this is the second biggest reason why threads are ended, and it's a good one. When I go to other forums and see 20+ pages of a topic, I don't even bother. Who has that kind of time? I think the current policy is a good one.

As for some of the threads here that have gone way over 100 posts, I'm wondering if that is because they were imported from the old Babble and, in the transfer, sections of the threads duplicated themselves once or twice, making the thread artificially long (eg: one of the "Movies II" or "III" threads replicates itself in sections, like junk DNA). So in those threads, the post count is actually lower than what it appears.

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For my tag/signature line, I think I would like to quote a song from the popular children's musical Mary Poppins: When trying to express oneself, it's frankly quite absurd, to leaf through lengthy lexicons to find the perfect word. A little spontaneity keeps conversation keen. You need to find a way to say, precisely what you mean. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, even though the name of it is really quite atrocious. If you say it loud enough you'll always sound precocious. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious! Say it and wild animals will not seem so ferocious. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! Um-diddle-diddle-um-um-diddleye, Um-diddle-diddle-um-um-diddleye, Um-diddle-diddle-um-um-diddleye, Um-diddle-diddle-um-um-diddleye..."

I can understand why people wouldn't want to read a 20-page thread (although at 100 posts per page, that's a super-monster thread even by babble standards).

More typical around here would be a 2 or 3 page thread.

What I don't understand is this: if people wouldn't feel they can post in a paginated thread without reading all the previous pages, why do they feel excused (in the current non-paginated world of babble) from having to read the previous closed threads on the same subject?

The only difference is that with pagination it's easier to find the previous posts on the same topic. With multiple closed threads, babblers feel free to rehash the same old arguments over and over again [i]ad nauseam[/i], thread after thread, because the earlier threads on the same topic are closed, easy to forget, and hard to retrieve for reference. Is that the way we want babble to work?

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If M. Spector and I are in agreement we must be correct.

M. Spector wrote:

I can understand why people wouldn't want to read a 20-page thread (although at 100 posts per page, that's a super-monster thread even by babble standards).

More typical around here would be a 2 or 3 page thread.

Why would it only be 2 or 3 pages? Would you then be asking the mods to close it down? Why then and not earlier - or later? What magical synthesis will occur after 2 or 3 pages of an argument that wouldn't occur in a 100+ post thread or its sequel(s)?

Quote:

What I don't understand is this: if people wouldn't feel they can post in a paginated thread without reading all the previous pages, why do they feel excused (in the current non-paginated world of babble) from having to read the previous closed threads on the same subject?

As far as I can tell, no one is [i]required[/i] to search out and read all threads related to a topic they want to discuss before starting a new one. Old Babblers start not-so-necessary new threads all the time, and new babblers sign up every week and, notwithstanding Babble content guidelines, if they are beginning from a different start-point than you are, that's your problem, not theirs. Many here, yourself included, are kind enough to find the related threads and reference them for the newbie. I don't see a problem with this. Also, because someone may approach a topic from a slightly different perspective - something that's happened many times here - a new thread with a new title might be warranted. In any case, the argument you're using here cuts both ways. Perhaps very few would want to slog through even two or three 100-post pages just to see if what they want to post has already been posted. They'll probably look at the first page and the last half of the last page. The solution you're suggesting will not actually address the problem you cite.

Quote:

The only difference is that with pagination it's easier to find the previous posts on the same topic. With multiple closed threads, babblers feel free to rehash the same old arguments over and over again [i]ad nauseam[/i], thread after thread, because the earlier threads on the same topic are closed, easy to forget, and hard to retrieve for reference. Is that the way we want babble to work?

I would argue the exact opposite: with pagination it's much harder to find individual posts on a particular topic. (If posts is what you meant and not threads). Even if the paginated thread was easier to find, the content is much much harder to sift through, and many people's highly enlightening, revolutionizing epiphanies will be obscured somewhere on pages 2 or 3, which will get the least traffic for any given thread in the suggestion you provide.

I propose upping the post count to 120 for each thread.

The new Babble allows for tagging the thread you start with numerous keywords, so presumably, over time, it will become easier to search threads that are the same or similar in topic.

When trying to express oneself, it's frankly quite absurd, to leaf through lengthy lexicons to find the perfect word. A little spontaneity keeps conversation keen. You need to find a way to say, precisely what you mean. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,

As things stand now, there are very few threads that continue into a new thread after the original has been closed for length. Of that very few, a small proportion go beyond 2 or 3 threads. My statement was predicated on the assumption that each page in a paginated thread would be limited to 100 posts. But proper forum software allows each user to customize the reading of threads to specify a preferred page length; so a thread of 200 posts would be two pages long if the pages were 100 posts each, but 5 pages long if the user had customized her display to show a maximum of 40 posts per page, for example.

[b]This also points up the benefit of pagination for dial-up users:[/b] instead of having to download 100 posts at a time, the dial-up user could opt to have only the last page download, set to show a maximum of, say, 40 posts.

Once dial-up users have the freedom to determine the maximum number of posts that need to be downloaded per page, the [b]ENTIRE RATIONALE FOR CLOSING THREADS FOR LENGTH DISAPPEARS![/b] And since closing threads for length seems to be a major preoccupation of the moderators, it would certainly lighten their workload if threads simply paginated automatically, as they grew, according to each user's own preferences.

jas wrote:

Would you then be asking the mods to close it down?

As explained above, no need!

In any event, the whole concept of closing threads for length is anathema to the ostensible purpose of babble - to allow - nay, encourage - discussion.

jas wrote:

M. Spector wrote:

What I don't understand is this: if people wouldn't feel they can post in a paginated thread without reading all the previous pages, why do they feel excused (in the current non-paginated world of babble) from having to read the previous closed threads on the same subject?

As far as I can tell, no one is required to search out and read all threads related to a topic they want to discuss before starting a new one.

I wasn't talking about searching out all threads "related" to a topic. I was talking about reading a linked but separate sequence of thread-chunks, whose separated existence was only necessitated by the practice of closing threads after 100 posts - i.e. a sequence of thread-chunks that, in a rational world, would actually be a single thread, paginated automatically and conveniently by the forum software in accordance with each user's particular preferences.

And I wasn't talking about "starting a new thread"; I was talking about simply making a post in an existing thread. People are presumably expected to at least speed-read the thread they want to post in, to avoid duplication or asking questions already answered, etc.

My point, which you obviously missed, was to counter the objection to pagination that says "I don't want to have to read through a 5-page thread to get up to speed in the conversation before I post in it." And my counter was, in effect, "If you turned those previous 4 pages into separate, closed-for-length thread-chunks (as happens now), you still don't solve the problem, if you feel you have to read through them all in order to get up to speed. In fact, you make it worse, because you have to [b]find[/b] the previous 4 thread-chunks before you can [b]read[/b] them; whereas with pagination, the previous pages are just a click away."

jas wrote:

M. Spector wrote:

The only difference is that with pagination it's easier to find the previous posts on the same topic. With multiple closed threads, babblers feel free to rehash the same old arguments over and over again ad nauseam, thread after thread, because the earlier threads on the same topic are closed, easy to forget, and hard to retrieve for reference. Is that the way we want babble to work?

I would argue the exact opposite: with pagination it's much harder to find individual posts on a particular topic. (If posts is what you meant and not threads). Even if the paginated thread was easier to find, the content is much much harder to sift through, and many people's highly enlightening, revolutionizing epiphanies will be obscured somewhere on pages 2 or 3, which will get the least traffic for any given thread in the suggestion you provide.

I wasn't talking about trying to find a [b]particular individual post[/b] within a thread (which, as far as I can see is no easier or harder in either system, once you know where the thread is). I was talking about the same thing I alluded to above - i.e., getting up to speed on an ongoing conversation in a thread before jumping in, by reading the previous posts. With pagination, you can read the previous posts easily; but if you have to find [b]predecessor closed-for-length thread-chunks[/b] it's not as convenient. [b]As a result, people won't (don't) bother to do it.[/b] They will jump in and make a comment or ask a question or breathlessly report some news item that could very well already have been brought up in the previous closed-for-length thread-chunk. The result is that you have a system where closing a thread for length is tantamount to wiping the slate clean, so that babblers can go on discussing the topic in a new thread-chunk [b]as if the previous closed-for-length thread-chunk(s) never existed, re-inventing the wheel all over again. What could be better calculated to prolong a discussion unnecessarily[/b]?

Case in point: the thread about Russia and Ossetia and Georgia that got chopped up into about 15 bite-sized thread-chunks by the moderators for the "convenience" of dial-up users and the utter inconvenience of everyone else. Naturally, you got people reporting news stories and chiming in with comments in thread-chunk #5 that had already been brought up in thread-chunk #2 - or avoiding posting in the current thread-chunk altogether because it was completely impractical to track down all the previous thread-chunks to see what had been posted before. As a result, the discussion went around and around and around dealing with the same points over and over.

jas wrote:

I propose upping the post count to 120 for each thread.

Sure. Let's replace one arbitrary number with another. And get the dial-up people pissed off — the very people the closing-for-length policy is supposedly designed to help!

jas wrote:

The new Babble allows for tagging the thread you start with numerous keywords, so presumably, over time, it will become easier to search threads that are the same or similar in topic.

Again, this comment is based on misconstruing what I was saying about finding previous closed-for-length thread-chunks that were essentially the [b]same thread[/b] — not topically-related threads.

As for keywords, nobody has explained to me what that is all about. Doesn't the babble search engine search the entire text of posts (like Google does) - not just the "keywords"?

And this brings up another good reason to scrap the closing-for-length policy: the person starting up a new "continuation" thread-chunk will not necessarily (if at all) type in the same key words that were used (if at all) by the person who started the now-closed-for-length thread-chunk. This would not be a problem (if indeed it is a problem) if threads were paginated.

[IMG]http://i38.tinypic.com/1r9lpy.gif[/IMG]

jas wrote:

Also, the fact that you value 'getting up to speed' before posting is admirable, but seriously, not everyone cares.

Actually, I didn't mean to sound that flippant about it. Most people do care that what they've written has been read and understood, but honestly, do you think it's going to be easier to correct someone who has either just repeated something you already pointed out or who has misinterpreted you, by referring back to a page you think your post may be on? And what page reference will you use, if your settings allow for 100 posts per page, but theirs only allows for 25? So, your brilliant insight is back on page 2 for you, but for them it's maybe page 5, 6 or 7. Are they going to care to look that up to verify? 

When trying to express oneself, it's frankly quite absurd, to leaf through lengthy lexicons to find the perfect word. A little spontaneity keeps conversation keen. You need to find a way to say, precisely what you mean. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Quote:

When did clicking become such a huge chore?

To that I'll just say, if you're on dial-up or shitty internet you want to have to click and load a new page as little as possible. 

I'm sorry, I'm just not convinced. I think that threads do have a natural life and death. I don't think I want to read three-year long (notice I say 'long', not 'old) threads. I also don't think that Babble became as popular as it did by being like other boards. 

January 2, 2009 - 8:38am

#2 (permalink)

"Time is Dead", and so is that thread on the CBC, for which I had just prepared a (now dead) posting comparing Sven's offerings with those of Peter Sellers' Chauncy Gardner. Someday, Maysie, you might offer up a rationale for your timing (in this case, aabout 8:30 a.m. on Jan. 2) in deciding to terminate. Thread drift? Yeah, but perhaps you or another PooBah could have intervened and told the bastard to lay off his star spangled innuendo? Maybe next time?

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On the advice of Catchfire I am bringing this complaint here (and I see a well-established thread of some length).

To repeat - could the PooBahs intervene with those of challenged ancestry who go to great lengths to muck up a discussion?

Here's the fella below (in this same thread) arguing for irrationality:

Sven

rabble-rouser

Member: 10972

Joined: Jul 22 2005

-->

December 18, 2008 - 11:29pm

#34 (permalink)

M. Spector, the problem with your argument is that you're being too rational.

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Sure, Sven.

George. 

I close threads when I notice that they have reached over 100 posts. It ain't frikking rocket science. Sometimes I notice at 101, sometimes I notice at 120. No superpowers for mods, as jrose said.

Not that it's any of your damn business, George, but I generally wake up around 7am, and usually get online around 7:30. I mostly work from home, usually on the computer, so I will pop onto babble, post, ban trolls, and close threads at weird times like 7:30am, 5pm (when GTA babbler mods are heading home or to meetings) and I also will occasionally stay up late, and will close threads at any and all of those times when I see them reach 100 posts or have degenerated into sniping and name-calling.

Sheesh. 

P.S. In terms of intervening (and the info you gave about Sven and M.Spector tells me nothing about which thread that exchange happened in), I'm going to channel Michelle and tell you, and everyone, once again, that if you see a situation in which a discussion is getting out of hand/abusive/needing of moderator intervention: PM A MOD! Generally that would be Michelle or oldgoat, as the "main" mods. We can't fix something if we don't know it's going on. 

P.S. The thread in question that was closed was not only over 100 posts, but it had turned into a discussion about Cuba!  That's exactly why I think it's a good idea to keep our tradition of closing long threads.  They're usually past their best before date at that point.