| ~Bunbunmaru News~ > Letters to the Editor |
| News thread format |
| << < (2/7) > >> |
| 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:
--- Quote from: ♪ TheStupidOne ♫ on March 10, 2011, 02:51:26 PM ---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. --- End quote --- 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. --- Quote from: ♪ TheStupidOne ♫ on March 10, 2011, 02:51:26 PM ---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? --- End quote --- 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:
--- Quote from: Tengukami on March 10, 2011, 02:57:12 PM ---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. --- End quote --- 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. --- Quote ---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. --- End quote --- 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:
--- Quote from: Ghaleon on March 10, 2011, 07:47:26 PM ---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. --- End quote --- 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. |
| Navigation |
| Message Index |
| Next page |
| Previous page |