As far as I can tell, the posts were moved to a new topic by goofyballer, who gave it the initial title of “Cactus goes to the gym, comes back with COVID”.
Should all containment threads be moved to French BBV?
There are multiple issues being conflated right now. My minor objection there was an obnoxiously long title drawing attention to a dumb thread, and you were only partially responsible for the length as it was increased by somebody else. The ability of most reg’s to edit titles is imo frequently abused and I think people should show a little more restraint, but my lengthy post above has nothing to do with that.
As for the current Cactus thread, I think it’s dumb and would be better elsewhere, but I don’t have strong feelings about it. That also isn’t what my post above was about.
The type of situation I was referring to are the heated meta-arguments that quickly snowball into a rapid and nasty back and forth between a small number of people. We haven’t had one of those in 8 whole days, but we do have them with alarming frequency and I do think there should be more effort made to deescalate them since they are always a net negative.
Overall, I think there is a tendency for some people to underestimate the size of the community and treat it as an insular, private club. We currently have around 500 unique users every single day, 200 of whom are logged in and actively posting and liking comments. There is a vocal minority here that drives most drama, usually without showing much consideration for how the majority experiences the forum.
The thread title changing is stupid because I’ll start getting notifications for a thread I don’t recognize ever posting in and then I have to read half a dozen posts to get the context and figure it out. It’s not funny or clever or interesting so just stop doing it. Or maybe prevent the forum software from letting people do it. Or remove this dumb idea of TL3.
Isn’t that just a configuration change? Make the change.
People probably make title changes because they’re bored. It would be no loss if that was prevented for non admins.
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Then neither should original thread titles to insult a poster. Especially not by a mod.
I think the thread title changes are OK for ongoing mega-threads as long as the titles are somewhat consistent. E.g. “The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: XXX” or “COVID: XXX.” Here, the new titles can help provide some context to users that don’t follow every post.
But title changes seem less useful for threads that will run their course in a few hundred posts or less.
I do think the tendency for content to be collected in megathreads as opposed to a larger number of more focused thread affects the way that users interact with the forum and with each other. Speaking from personal experience, I’ve given up on following some mega threads and only jump into them occasionally. I probably miss some content this way that I would see if we had more threads on narrower topics. At the same time, some new threads have been moderated out of existence because “we already have a thread for that” even if the purpose of the new thread is to discuss a narrow topic that is related to a broader megathread.
Maybe something worth giving some more thought to as a community.
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Megathreads would be at least a little better if we could avoid 50-post tangents on city name pronunciations and similar types of off-topic (for the thread) derails.
I know people are here partly for the community and socialization, but that could be done in the LC thread, or one of the many topics in Sundry? Right?
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Megathreads function as on-going conversations between high-volume users. Of course there are going to be tangents and derails. That is how conversations normally proceed.
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Well, okay, but that way of using the megathreads actively detracts from the forum experience of other users. I’m not calling for a complete ban on “off-topic” posts in threads, but maybe people could be a little more thoughtful about whether their post is a net positive before firing it in?
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What are some guidelines to help clarify when a post is a net positive before firing it in?
People can find it to be a positive for themselves to actively participate in a community. An online forum isn’t the best vehicle for mainlining information.
The way to get what you want is to have a large enough userbase to get a few anal retentive people who are willing to go to the trouble of reading a megathread and quoting the most important posts to a separate thread of highlights.
I am SHOCKED by these poll results. It’s like that picture of that young woman in the shawl. Then you find out 70% of the planet is seeing an old lady with a big nose.
Not only the incessant pony comments that were last funny more than a year ago, but all the other clichés repeated here post after post, day after day, as if they’re hilarious or insightful.
I was thinking of starting a UP cliché thread for them all but didn’t want to destroy my stratospheric likes/post ratio.
I agree that ponies aren’t usually funny, but it is sometimes helpful to know why no one is interacting with your post. If this is because the discussion already happened, that’s nice to know.
Is it about three fiddy?
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People complain about stuff all the time here, nbd.
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Nailed it.
I thought about pointing out the pony of you complaining about pony posts because I’ve been doing so for months now, but that might break the Internet so I’m not going to do that.