News thread format

[Ghaleon]

I don't mean to cause trouble or anything, but I recall a few months ago, when TSO was making new threads in Renko's featuring various news articles, that they generated more discussion than the current megathread. Edible thought it was  a bad idea because it knocked off other disputably worthy threads off of the front page of Renko's. However I think overall activity and interest was greater with those multiple news threads. Furthermore, I thought pretty much everyone BUT Edible said they liked it that way, or at the very least, said they didn't care.

sorry Edible, I don't mean to call you out, I mean I'm just going by memory here so it might not just be you, but yeah. Anyway, if there really was a reasonable number of people who thought the megathread thing was better, so be it. But I think it's kind of a waste to disallow what I thought many people seemed to prefer.

[Tengukami]

Edible wasn't alone. I felt that having separate "whacky news of the weird" threads was making Renko's look like FARK. None of the threads received more than a handful of replies (which seems to be the case with the general News thread), which wasn't justifying the clutter they were causing. Sort of why in TARC, there's a general Misc. Questions thread, instead of separate threads for separate question. So no, I don't think having a separate thread for each individual "yo check this out" news thread is a good idea.

A major, groundbreaking, history-making news story could and maybe even should stand on its own as its own thread. But the FARKy, Slashdot-ish mini-articles that got maybe a page or two of replies before people lost interest? Not so much. Having the news in one thread keeps things clean, and so far as I've seen, it hasn't gotten overwhelming or confusing in there.

[Edible]

A major, groundbreaking, history-making news story could and maybe even should stand on its own as its own thread. But the FARKy, Slashdot-ish mini-articles that got maybe a page or two of replies before people lost interest? Not so much. Having the news in one thread keeps things clean, and so far as I've seen, it hasn't gotten overwhelming or confusing in there.

Quite so; the world cup thread comes to mind.

On the other hand, I can understand the appeal for simpler organization in viewing thread titles, so there may be a slightly more permanent solution depending on if we go ahead with plans to add a new board.  It's something we're considering, at least.

[helvetica]

If you're talking about the anime board, it's not happening anytime soon because you guys just went back to the megathread crap rather than split the topics apart for each show like we tried to push towards.  So why even bother at this point?

My problem with megathreads is it's really hard to see if there's something interesting to see unless you're actively reading the thread.  I see another reply to the HERE THERE BE NEWS thread and I don't know if it's a story I'm interested in or if it's just a comment or whatever.  The fact that you continue to gravitate towards them makes no sense either.  They're too bulky for new people to get into or casual people to follow and they're horrible for any sort of organization.

The other thing is, is it really hurting anyone to have a bunch of threads with only a handful of replies?  How is this any worse than cramming everything into a giant convoluted thread where you don't know who's commenting on what?   There's hardly any activity in Renko's as it is now, so acting like it "cluttered" things up is stupid.  The world isn't going to die because there's more than 3 active threads in Renko's at any one time.

It's one thing to have catchall threads for minor things like reporting accomplishments in Touhou, or minor things that have happened to you, or what you're currently watching/reading/eating/lusting/stabbing over.  But for stuff that's supposed to generate discussion I think it's stupid to shove it all into a big thread where it requires dedication to follow.

[Tengukami]

Dedication? Confusion? I'm not seeing it. A news story gets posted in the News thread, people make a few comments on it, then another story is posted. Easy peasy.

The purpose for the News thread, as far as I see it, is to give a home to all the "oh hey that's neat" news stories that might get a couple replies. It's the same logic we use for countless other "megathreads" on this site.

I just think there should be a balance. Huge news events could and should probably have their own thread. While posting individual threads for "WTF news of the weird" stories isn't hurting anyone per se, anyone coming to Renko's could be forgiven if they thought they stumbled upon our FARK board or something.

[helvetica]

But what constitutes a "huge" news and what isn't though?  Something seemingly insignificant may generate quite a bit of discussion, and something huge may end up just being nothing but "yup"s and "me too!"s  And the subtext for Renko's is specifically "let's talk about the real world for a change", wouldn't, I dunno, NEWS fall into that?  The fact of the matter is, there's no activity in Renko's, so would it really be that big of a deal?  As it stands now Renko's has no purpose.  The vast majority of off-topic discussion happens in CPMC.  What's left for Renko's is a desktop thread, a thread for whatever's the upcoming con, and maybe 1 or 2 threads for whatever topic of discussion, and that's about it.  It gets maybe 15 posts on a good day.

As for following, yes it is a pain in the ass.  I look at the site index and I see a new post in the news thread.  How am I supposed to know if it's something I might be interested in or if it's just a comment without actually reading the thread?  What if I hadn't visited the thread in a few days and a bunch of replies pile up, how am I suppose to follow the current conversation?  Now I'm not against megathreads, as long as they have a narrow subject of interest.  Homestuck has a "megathread", but it's literally about Homestuck.  You know if there's a reply in the thread it's going to be about Homestuck.  News though (and anime) are such widereaching topics that while each reply may be about news or anime, how do you know if it's a specific topic of news you're interested in, or an anime you're watching?

Just because a thread subject may not get a thousand replies in a week doesn't suddenly mean it's not a subject of interest to some people, nor does it not deserve its own thread.  Threads make things a lot easier to organize and view, and it's not like there's overcrowding in Renko's.  If SMF was setup for subthreading within a thread (like UBB or IPB), maybe you'd have a point, but it's not.  Each thread is a flat view of posts, so the division needs to happen at the thread level to make it a lot easier for the end user to pick and choose which content is valuable to them.

[Tengukami]

But what constitutes a "huge" news and what isn't though?  Something seemingly insignificant may generate quite a bit of discussion, and something huge may end up just being nothing but "yup"s and "me too!"s  And the subtext for Renko's is specifically "let's talk about the real world for a change", wouldn't, I dunno, NEWS fall into that?  The fact of the matter is, there's no activity in Renko's, so would it really be that big of a deal?  As it stands now Renko's has no purpose.  The vast majority of off-topic discussion happens in CPMC.  What's left for Renko's is a desktop thread, a thread for whatever's the upcoming con, and maybe 1 or 2 threads for whatever topic of discussion, and that's about it.  It gets maybe 15 posts on a good day.

if you say so. But then shouldn't we have some consistency in that area? Why would Renko's be allowed to fill up with Slashdot/FARK threads, but TARC can't fill up with miscellaneous questions? That's something you'd need to get straight first, I'd think.

As for following, yes it is a pain in the ass.  I look at the site index and I see a new post in the news thread.  How am I supposed to know if it's something I might be interested in or if it's just a comment without actually reading the thread?  What if I hadn't visited the thread in a few days and a bunch of replies pile up, how am I suppose to follow the current conversation?

You can't be serious. The News thread is so seldom updated that if you click the "New" button, you _might_ have to scroll up half a page to see what you missed a week ago.

[helvetica]

if you say so. But then shouldn't we have some consistency in that area? Why would Renko's be allowed to fill up with Slashdot/FARK threads, but TARC can't fill up with miscellaneous questions? That's something you'd need to get straight first, I'd think.

The misc questions thread in TARC is a different issue, as it's a catchall for simple one or two reply questions in the touhou subforum.  There's already a default topic of discussion right there.  Plus TARC does get a lot of traffic so a little bit of consolation is a necessary evil.  Renko's doesn't even get a tenth of the traffic TARC does.

It wouldn't kill me though if it went away.  I'm honestly not bothered by the "clutter" of multiple threads.  If anything it's more efficient than a smaller number of gigantic postcount threads as far as server resources are concerned.  Obviously the sweet spot is a moderate number of moderate postcount threads, but 2 threads with 1k posts vs 200 threads with 10 posts I'd rather have the 200 threads.  It makes searching for easier too, as you can just look at the thread topic and see if it's something you're interested in rather than having to dig into a thread or use search to find a specific post.  The point of the misc question thread (at least to me) isn't as much to get rid of these threads and consolidate them, but to prevent people posting multiple threads on the same subject or question.

You can't be serious. The News thread is so seldom updated that if you click the "New" button, you _might_ have to scroll up half a page to see what you missed a week ago.

I am serious, because I don't follow the news thread regularly and when I do check on it it's a mess to catch up.   And beyond that this was more of a criticism of megathreads in general.  The problem isn't that bad when the megathread is on a very specific topic of discussion, but something so general as news or anime it is awful to follow if you're not a regular reader.

[Ghaleon]

I'll just bud in and say that I too find myself never looking at the news thread simply because the idea of it is so intimidating. I feel like I can't post there without reading the whole thread, and fact is, I never will. I'm also not such a forum addict that I read every post of every thread. I read MAYBE 10% of what shows up on these boards (probably a whole lot less if you count cpmc). Being able to see the topics and titles of each news thead seperately will help gain my interest, and I doubt I'd be the only one. Furthermore, I think a thread with just 2-4 pages of replies is fine. Why does it have to have more?

Ammy brings a good point about the Touhou questions thread comparison though. I like to think the reason why that one should stay as a megathread is because if you have a question regarding Touhou, you should probably show some effort in trying to find the answer on your own first. You ARE interested after all right? Plus you get a chance to learn stuff about you may not have learned about before. With the news thread, people go there because it's interesting, and they want to discuss stuff. Reading a thread with replies long old and forgotten about is simply torture, nobody is going to care if you have anything to add to those older comments anymore. So you skip to the last few pages. I'm NOT the kind of guy that people tease as having ADD or whatever, I'm about as patient and focused as they come actually, but frankly, I'm not interested in looking back 3 pages or so in a thread I have no clue what it's discussing just so I can hope the recent evolution of the thread is about something I DO want to post about and discuss. Furthermore, I don't  want the thing I deem interesting enough to discuss to suddenly be forgotten about simply because someone posted a new article in the same thread which is completely unrelated as new posts feel obligated to change the topic.

In any case, back when it actually happened, I saw a lot more interest from people in general about having separate topics than I do here. Either everyone is a chicken, or Edible perma banned them all *hides* >=P

[Tengukami]

I'll just bud in and say that I too find myself never looking at the news thread simply because the idea of it is so intimidating. I feel like I can't post there without reading the whole thread, and fact is, I never will.

Fortunately, you don't have to. Have you looked in the News thread? Someone posts an article, and if it gets comments at all, it'll be a handful. Unlike the Misc Questions thread, you don't have to read the entire thing to make sure someone hasn't covered what you want to post first. Just look at the last page. Chances are, there's one article that a few people are discussing (with some exceptions, such as the Middle East protests - which is why I believe major events should get their own thread, either by someone starting them, or if a string of comments on a story gets long enough, splitting it off into its own thread). It's really not that scary or complicated.

This is why I feel we don't need to make separate threads for each news post. The current News thread is doing its job just fine, although yes, major stories should get split off into a thread of their own. In my humble opinion.

[Ghaleon]

Fortunately, you don't have to. Have you looked in the News thread? Someone posts an article, and if it gets comments at all, it'll be a handful. Unlike the Misc Questions thread, you don't have to read the entire thing to make sure someone hasn't covered what you want to post first. Just look at the last page. Chances are, there's one article that a few people are discussing (with some exceptions, such as the Middle East protests - which is why I believe major events should get their own thread, either by someone starting them, or if a string of comments on a story gets long enough, splitting it off into its own thread). It's really not that scary or complicated.

This is why I feel we don't need to make separate threads for each news post. The current News thread is doing its job just fine, although yes, major stories should get split off into a thread of their own. In my humble opinion.

Yeah, I've done that a few times, and I find myself not interested in anything within the last  few pages or most recent article, then wondering why I wasted the time. Because of this, the frequency of which I do this isn't great, and I rekon the majority of members are in the same boat, and/or don't bother to try at ALL. Making the overall interest of Renko's much lower than what it could be. I mean I get theoretically, it shouldn't be the case, but I think it simply is, and you can't force people to change their habits.

[Unassuming Squid]

I was going to come in here and post my opinions, but then I read Ghaleon's posts. I personally have to agree with everything he's said. A megathread just doesn't seem to work for news. Also, I personally remember quite a few of the separate threads having several replies, more so than the megathread has had per story. I could be wrong, I guess.

[Tengukami]

Yeah, I've done that a few times, and I find myself not interested in anything within the last  few pages or most recent article, then wondering why I wasted the time. Because of this, the frequency of which I do this isn't great, and I rekon the majority of members are in the same boat, and/or don't bother to try at ALL. Making the overall interest of Renko's much lower than what it could be. I mean I get theoretically, it shouldn't be the case, but I think it simply is, and you can't force people to change their habits.

Let me ask you something: first you said you have a problem with the News thread, then you say you don't even read the News thread, and now you say you have read it, but have never seen anything that interests you - so what is this thread for? I'm confused, as the goalposts keep moving.

If you don't see News stories you like, guess what? You can post your own, and show people what interests you. The more the merrier!

The term "megathread" for the News thread is pretty laughable, to be honest, when you consider how easy it is to read and follow. It's really as simple looking at the last page, if you're new. You don't have to read the whole thread or even the last couple pages. If you take a look, you'll find that to be the case.

[helvetica]

Except not everyone who's interested in the news thread is there to post news, but to look for news that may interest them.  If it's hard to do so why bother reading it at all?

[Tengukami]

Except not everyone who's interested in the news thread is there to post news, but to look for news that may interest them.  If it's hard to do so why bother reading it at all?

Except it isn't hard to do. Ghaleon pretty much said so. He's just complaining about the content at this point. And sorry, but if you're not contributing a story that interests you but are just waiting for someone to post something that entertains you, personally, well ...

[helvetica]

Except it isn't hard to do. Ghaleon pretty much said so. He's just complaining about the content at this point. And sorry, but if you're not contributing a story that interests you but are just waiting for someone to post something that entertains you, personally, well ...

What's so inherently wrong with that?  It's a news thread.  It's not like a 2 way discussion topic here.

[Tengukami]

What's "wrong" with complaining that you, personally, are not being entertained by a thread is that it's a bit silly. If you're not entertained, and have nothing to contribute, well, don't click on the thread? What are we supposed to do, take down a list of Subjects Ghaleon Likes and post them in a sticky, so people will go ahead and post news stories that might entertain him?

I'm not saying that's what Ghaleon's implying here or anything, but we've gone from "I don't like the News thread" to "I don't read the News thread" to "Actually I have read it, but I didn't like any of the stories". That sucks and all, but there's not a lot we can do, unless Ghaleon wants to go ahead and post his favorite topics in the thread itself, and hope people will find stories for him.

[helvetica]

What's "wrong" with complaining that you, personally, are not being entertained by a thread is a bit silly. If you're not entertained, and have nothing to contribute, well, don't click on the thread? What are we supposed to do, take down a list of Subjects Ghaleon Likes and post them in a sticky, so people will go ahead and post news stories that might entertain him?

Lemme put it this way, I'm not heartbroken the news thread sucks.  There's a thousand different news aggregators out there, I'll just go on my merry way and waste my time there.  I don't really care that much for the news thread as a reader.  But sometimes I do like to share the things I do find, and Ghaleon was one of the people who said he enjoyed what I posted but was annoyed by the current setup and liked it when I posted them in their own threads.

The rest of my commentary is my distain for megathreads in particular, especially for such wide and varied topics.  As a reader I have no reason to read the news thread because there are FAR easily digested ways to get the content within the thread.  That's what I'm trying to say.

[Tengukami]

Lemme put it this way, I'm not heartbroken the news thread sucks.  There's a thousand different news aggregators out there, I'll just go on my merry way and waste my time there.  I don't really care that much for the news thread as a reader.  But sometimes I do like to share the things I do find, and Ghaleon was one of the people who said he enjoyed what I posted but was annoyed by the current setup and liked it when I posted them in their own threads.

Well, as Ghaleon's said he has been able to follow the News thread but that it bored him, and also said that he liked your stories, it seems the solution would be for you to post news stories again. But as you don't like posting in the News thread, ah well.

The rest of my commentary is my distain for megathreads in particular, especially for such wide and varied topics.  As a reader I have no reason to read the news thread because there are FAR easily digested ways to get the content within the thread.  That's what I'm trying to say.

In that case I'm confused about why we have them at all on this site.

[helvetica]

Well, as Ghaleon's said he has been able to follow the News thread but that it bored him, and also said that he liked your stories, it seems the solution would be for you to post news stories again. But as you don't like posting in the News thread, ah well.

Why would I support a thread I think is crap?  Since Edible complained about me making separate threads and started merging my stuff I just stopped posting them.  Notice I'm not posting anything anymore.  I post the links in order to generate conversation about what I think is an interesting topic.  Nowadays I just post the link in IRC and talk about it there.  And when there is something interesting that comes up in the news thread, the thing is already dead and buried by the time I find it.  I'm not interested in finding the articles, 9 times out of 10 I can find the articles on Fark or whatever.  I'm more interested in hearing people's opinions and jabbering about it.  What's the point in walking in on a conversation that's several days old and buried?

In that case I'm confused about why we have them at all on this site.

Because you guys keep on gravitating towards them.  I asked to try to break up the anime thread into separate show threads but that lasted for about a week before everyone gravitated back to the anime megathread.  What am I going to do, ban people because they're posting wrong?  Above all that, I don't like having 3-4 different conversations or points of discussion going on at once.  The forums are NOT IRC, there is no need to cram everything into one thread.

[Ghaleon]

I don't know if I'm being misunderstood, or if you're using a copout.

I have TRIED reading the news thread in an effort to get, and provide interesting discussion related to news articles, but found myself either uninterested, or unable to post any comments without it being a necro about an old article that nobody will care about and/or reply to. I've done this several times, but I do NOT do it so often that I consider myself able to "keep up to date" with the news thread in general. I rekon most people are in either the same boat as me, or do not bother trying to do this at all (certainly not more than once). Furthermore, I'm not as "Neet"ish as some of the people on these boards, and I generally don't see news articles at all outside of places like this. The news in general I find from available sources IRL are full of bullshit like "some celeberty has dodecahedruplits, how fashionable!", "Some Celebrity is going to prison for 4 minutes because the murdered 2000 people, ohnoes!", "Some Celebrity said "some Celebrity is dumb", ITS ON BISH"..

Yeah.. Sorry, but despite what you're implying ammy, I'm not a selfish twat just because I want to read your guys' opinion on news and comment on it but have nothing to start for myself, because the news I see on my own is shit. And given the fact that I only have the time to read a minor fraction of the MoTK boards in general, or I can spend much more time sifting thru shit news to hopefully find something potentially interesting, I'll continue to read MoTk and hope the other people more prone to net browsing/news searching find something to post instead.

I already stated why I think a megathread works for Touhou questions moreso than news. Don't need to reiterate that. The goal is unclear? The goal is simply to make the news thread set in a format that I think most people prefer. and I honestly believe that most people preferred individual threads over a megathread in this specific scenario. I'm not arrogant, and I don' tthink everyone thinks such just because I do. I think such because Renko's activity shot up when they had their own threads, and now it's dying down again.

[Tengukami]

I'm just trying to follow your ever-changing issue, Ghaleon. The only thing I'm sure of is you're dissatisfied with something.

[E-Nazrin]

Well, if it's the mixed content of the news thread that's the issue, it might be possible to split it up into multiple broad topics (like world events, feel-good news stories, science, politics, economy, etc). A little like the chat/rage/joy split of general discussion in CPMC, maybe. I also like the idea of splitting off main-news-thread discussions that DO generate a fair bit of talk, as a retroactive justification for topics that generate enough discussion to be considered 'major' stories worthy of giving more specialized attention.

I also question whether increased activity in Renko's is necessarily a good thing, especially when the main complaint against the many-threads format is that it would increase the amount of meaningless me-too replies that don't actually contribute to or spark much discussion - that could clutter up the thread list in Renko's (possibly discouraging the creation of other, potentially more meaningful threads) and take up more server space/resources. The upside is that it would be easier to find individual stories that interest someone personally, but I'm not sure how important that is for Renko's.

One good measure for whether many-threads would be appropriate could be how many of the threads on Renko's front page are 'used' regularly. If rather few (say, less than half of the default-size frontpage get replies within several days), then there's one less good argument for keeping news stories to one thread. But since that's not the only reason, it might not be enough on its own.
EDIT: Looking at it, it seems like the current front page probably isn't a good representation with three locked threads within the past two days, so it's tough to judge this offhand - it actually looks like about half have been replied to within maybe four days, with rather old replies only for the last two or three topics on the page. Ambiguous.

[Tengukami]

Those are all great points, Maus. Thanks for breathing some life into this.

[Ghaleon]

I'm just trying to follow your ever-changing issue, Ghaleon. The only thing I'm sure of is you're dissatisfied with something.

>='(. It's not ever changing. Sometimes someone has multiple reasons for things you know. I started off with the fact that I simply think more people enjoyed it more when they were separate for a bit, TSO added some comments, you were disagreeing, and I decided to offer my own personal opinions on it to support TSO's viewpoint. But I didn't start personally to begin with because my own personal opinion as to what's better probably isn't going to (nor should it) influence the format of the forums.

[Tengukami]

It's all good mang. You did change up though, going from "news thread sucks" to "but I've never read it" to "ok I have but nothing I saw there interested me" but I ain't bothered one way or the other. Just tryin' to get everything straight here is all.

[Ghaleon]

Oh.. I see sorry. You're taking me saying never literally, which is reasonable. I have a bad habit of saying never in casual conversation when I mean to say "hardly ever" or something >=P. Point is it just feels like a chore to, which on the rare occasion I actually do it, I'm left feeling disappointed anyway.

[HakureiSM]

Um, I'd like to team up with TSO here.
I think what Ghaleon meant is most members(well, at least himself, me and TSO, as far as this thread shows) don't want to have to *keep track* of one thread or another to know it's contents.

Megathreads, in the sense of threads with a broadass subject regardless of activity, make it hard for someone to read or talk about something within a subject without reading/talking about/having a great interest on everything else on that subject.

In the specific case of news, it's hard for someone to see different news events if they're cluttered up in one thread.
There's no indexing to make it easy to find something you like, and it's too broad a subject to just jump in and read whatever's latest.
Let's say maybe I want to read about some interesting event that happened in the world this month.
I go there in the news thread, the latest news post doesn't interest me. Okay so I'll read the one before that. Welp, not quite what I want to read either. Kay, I'll read the next on(ry
see where I'm going here? There's no quick way to go around the posts until you find what you want, the only way is to read every single one in order until you do. That could take 5 minutes and two posts, or one hour and 30 pages.

That's what puts me off completely about the news thread, and general mega-threads, with the exception of the 3 chat threads in CPMC, because they're well, chat threads.
I haven't even been in the anime thread anymore lately, come to think of it.

And as TSO put it, for some reason people gravitate to mega threads, and the last effort to split the anime one(which was a relief to me, it was nice to be able to talk about one series without it being cut by another) also didn't last long.

e: Sorry Squid, didn't notice you :3

[Ghaleon]

Um, I'd like to team up with TSO here.
I think what Ghaleon meant is most members(well, at least himself, me and TSO, as far as this thread shows) don't want to have to *keep track* of one thread or another to know it's contents.

Squid doesn't matter, wut a chump >=P

I just want to add that even if I see news I'm interested in discussing in the megathread. I don't really feel like I should reply to it if its latest mention was 2 or more  pages back, even if that reply was less than a week old. Even if I did, and even if nobody minded, chances are it won't really fuel more discussion since that post is most likely going to be swallowed up by further discussion from the stuff on the most recent page already.

[Alfred F. Jones]

I rather like the idea of a news megathread. If someone posts a link to a story I'm not interested in, I don't respond. Simple as that. And the really fun part about the megathread format is that sometimes, people post regional news, or news from other countries I would have never heard about otherwise. I don't always respond to them, but I do appreciate hearing about them, and if that post had been made into a thread in and of itself, I might have never realized that it was something I was interested in from thread title alone.