rigorousintuition.ca

stefano wrote:Keep up, shamus! Just joking. To be fair, the forum is moving rather faster than usual these days.

DAWG, AMEN. Three pages of material in 24 hours is just ridiculous....I mean, innit? I really think that sheer volume is becoming a disruptive issue and I wanted to test the waters here...do we need to conversate about new moderation to keep the sheer volume down? Or are there just too many beautiful people here and I am a fool to complain about the embarrassment of riches here?

Discuss?

A limit on new topics introduced per poster?

About twice a day I have to lock or merge duplicate threads here. If people could kindly read the forum itself or perform a quick search before posting new topics, it would go a long way toward solving this problem.

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Well, people could make more use of existing threads on the same topic. You can use search to dig up older threads and kick'em back up.

There are roughly speaking three common cases:

1) If someone writes a big post of their own, they will usually want to post it as a new thread. Or else, it's up to them to decide where it best fits and is likeliest to reach its readers. (They might also cross-post in existing threads as relevant.)

2) If someone has an article they want to copy-paste, however, they should use an existing thread if it exists. This keeps us aware of all that's been posted before. (We remain "in context," as our all-time posting champion might say.)

Of course, some news item might be a huge development in the poster's eyes, one that deserves highlighting. As an example, I put all stories and comments I want to make about banking and economics in the Wall Street thread, but sometimes I'll start a new thread with a cross-post from that to alert people to something I found minorly earthshaking. In that case, I expect the alert thread to drop away after its initial splash.

3) I have some understanding for those who might object to

a) a headline, because they find it wrong-headed or simply silly; or
b) the initial spin of an OP; or, um, sometimes
c) the OP author

of an existing thread, and therefore want to start a separate one. One might want to make a bid to reframe a given debate, and let the market decide.

I bet most of us frequent posters have done #3 at some point.

However, most thread proliferation seems to be of the #2 variety. Besides that this can lead to flooding, for the most part it's counter-productive because a story can stay in play much longer on a long general thread and still get readers later than it does as a one-off.

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Would it help to start using other forums than General Discussion? Or is that just fiddling with the goal posts?

I don't have a problem with the traffic, but I'm probably one of the most prodigious posters, so full disclosure...

Yes, feel free to use the goddam subforums. And there is actually a forum just for messages to the admin. So there really is no good reason to start a new thread in general discussion to let the whole board know that you couldn't get on the forum last night, or that your shift key is broken, or that someone tampered with your link, or that you love Hugh with all your heart and soul and want to marry him. Er, nevermind.

I think it would help to have an edict from the admin(s) on using the subforums, maybe we could do an experiment for a period of time and see how it goes.

barracuda wrote:Yes, feel free to use the goddam subforums. And there is actually a forum just for messages to the admin. So there really is no good reason to start a new thread in general discussion to let the whole board know that you couldn't get on the forum last night, or that your shift key is broken, or that someone tampered with your link, or that you love Hugh with all your heart and soul and want to marry him. Er, nevermind.

Totally agreed with your examples, except for the Loving Hugh idea. There should be one of those every day.

But subforums are a place to lose threads. Who is to say with certainty what is general discussion, or what's important, or how to categorize?

If there's ever a further board adjustment (and I know the labor won't be mine and I assure you I'm grateful for this board, its designers, admins and mods, but if you'll allow a proposal...) I've suggested several times requiring a subforum for each new thread (by drop down menu on every OP post), having GD turn into "Latest," and allowing users to customize which subforums' threads will end up appearing on their own "Latest." That way we might end up having both our ghettos and our public square.

Also, blogs would be great. And keywords. Now kill me.

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Montag wrote:I think it would help to have an edict from the admin(s) on using the subforums, maybe we could do an experiment for a period of time and see how it goes.

Hasn't that experiment with the sub-forums been going on now for some time? Few people seem to be using them.

Some people do post there, but how often are their posts seen?

Simulist wrote:Hasn't that experiment with the sub-forums been going on now for some time? Few people seem to be using them.

Some people do post there, but how often are their posts seen?

Well I was just suggesting a possible edict (for lack of a better term), b/c I certainly don't think it's going to happen organically. If it's already been going on, I've missed it.

Also, how can we have a good flamewar if we can't launch flanking threads?

I don't think it's that much of a problem, to a certain extent I like it. The more topics the wider the variety of interesting reading. you usually get this kind of thing when there's a particular subject a lot of people are looking at: WikiLeaks, an election, an attack or something. That's when several threads on the subject tend to pop up. I usually try to have a look at all unread topics to make sure I don't miss anything. And sometimes it's good to make a new thread for something unusually interesting, I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't dip into the 10-page threads on every visit.

promiscuous thread-initiation is getting a tad irritating when it means otherwise viable on-going threads wither & die of neglect

a blitzkrieg-style drive into the underpopulated lebensraum of the sub-forums requires a more obvious "see all posts" button that doesn't require you to log-on first to use it

So I guess I started this one inadvertently, I did a date search but didn't go back far enough, we usually get scooped by cryptogon. We beat him by 2 weeks, but I digress.

Sometimes the threads go wayyyyy further back than you think, I did ten pages just looking for an old thread last week.

Is there an automatic search option that could happen before the post, like when someone posts while you are composing? That would give a heads up.

Wombaticus Rex wrote:[/b] Three pages of material in 24 hours is just ridiculous....I mean, innit? I really think that sheer volume is becoming a disruptive issue and I wanted to test the waters here...do we need to conversate about new moderation to keep the sheer volume down? ..

Sheer volume is definately a problem, and any solution will be systemic rather just "please don't".

It is said that 'its not information overload, its insufficient filtering'. A limit on #posts/day/poster devolves the filtering task to us as individual posters, i think thats the easiest and best fix.

A more complete fix would incorporate feedback, so that i could set who's posts i want to be at the bottom of my general discussion page and who at the top. I wouldn't suggest a collective ranking system because they seem too easy to game/subvert.