Proposal: Retiring megathreads

[Martin Blank]

For the first few years of this forum, megathreads served an important role of herding small posts that would attract little attention into a larger set. This helped reduce clutter when we had, literally, several hundred posts per day. Now we have, at most, a few dozen, and sometimes in the single digits per day (and sometimes zero). Megathreads may now be hurting us, as more specific posts could drive more engagement.

So I'm asking you all what you think. Do we set them aside, or do we keep them? (Note: Necropost will remain no matter what.) This question will be up for 15 days. You have until just before Christmas Eve to vote.

[τ > π]

I like small topics. Intimate. Focused.
I dislike quoting. In megathreads, that's hard.

[Doc Giggles]

I think it depends on the thread. Some like Necropost make sense to keep around, but I will admit that a thread can get hard to follow if it gets too big

[nosystemd]

This thread is (or starts out) mostly about whether they're better overall or not. And some people like them, which would be less relevant if they weren't already part of the culture.

Why not allow them sometimes, and try to avoid them overall for the sake of this engagement that we are promising ourselves if we turn our back on them?

That way you get the most of the advantage of non-megathreads, and you don't discourage those who love them. Then there's no hard policy change, just a gradual move to a better forum. In my experience some policy is better than none, but trying to increase engagement with stricter new policies rarely works.

[Rorschach]

I argued against them quite vociferously the last time this was brought up. I thought they were funnelling a lot of posts through a very small space, and as such it was easy to miss a lot of content. You'd go sleep and then come back to find a hundred posts and a dozen different topic changes. All twelve of which you might have wanted to comment on had they had a thread of their own, but you'd missed them by that point.

I also thought they were making people reticent to start new threads as invariably they'd get "This should have gone in [megathread]"

However, these objections were based on us having dozens of active posters and hundreds of posts a day. As we're running somewhat on auxiliary power, I have absolutely flip-flopped in my thoughts on the matter. I think people are reticent to start new threads anyway. I have a lot of stupid questions still. I liked the open letter thread. Whatever the hell mensajitos were. I still have them but now I have nowhere to post them. I might want advice on the best way to dress a buck, or record my secret yearning for Estelle Getty somewhere I know she won't read it. Or wouldn't have, anyway. But now I don't want to start smaller threads for such trifles. Particularly as our scarcity of number (and I think it's now quality over quantity) might well mean those threads would lie fallow. Increasingly read but embarrassingly unanswered.

TL,DR: I like them now. Let's bring them back. Or at least some of them. Natural selection will push down the ones we're not using anyway.

[Seannery]

I also thought they were making people reticent to start new threads as invariably they'd get "This should have gone in [megathread]" [...] people are reticent to start new threads anyway.

come back to find a hundred posts and a dozen different topic changes. All twelve of which you might have wanted to comment on had they had a thread of their own

Let megathreads live, but copy out sub-threads? with pointing to new thread.

[nosystemd]

these objections were based on us having dozens of active posters and hundreds of posts a day. As we're running somewhat on auxiliary power, I have absolutely flip-flopped in my thoughts on the matter. I think people are reticent to start new threads anyway.

Natural selection will push down the ones we're not using anyway.

These days it's very difficult to get anybody to post about anything, because forums have unfortunately been mostly replaced with social media. Not that it's a good replacement-- you won't find me on Fakebook, Twitter has managed to find a way to turn 280 characters into a Javascript bloatfest (they're retiring the JS-free version in just a few days) and everyone is being moderated, semi-banned and shadowbanned 12 ways from Sunday at any rate.

That's the story on social media anyway. Ecosystems get out of control, then they get pruned, then if the pruning is too aggressive too far the whole thing collapses. It's not the only variable in play of course.

Let the forum grow a bit wild, if that's even still possible, then figure out where the trouble is and trim it up a little. But trying to guess what will happen based on what did in the past isn't going to tell you much. Or just listen to Rorschach since I agree with his post and I'm trying to lend further support to it here.

[τ > π]

I like small threads. Thread. Only one per topic.

[Deacon]

Let the forum grow a bit wild

I agree with this approach. If it becomes a problem, we can solve it. It doesn’t seem like a problem now from what I can tell.