Why do we need mega-threads?

About Unstuck
12

I like the mega threads. It feels more like everyone hanging out as a community.

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13

If you have separate threads it’s like little groups breaking off at parties to discuss what they’re interested in. The LC thread is the main community cluster anything goes thread.

14

I guess I just have a very different idea of “too much.” What does the Trump mega thread get in a normal weekday? 100 posts? I know it’s been a lot lately, but it won’t last. People are excited.

It’s also a lot easier to keep up if you have a few people you just skim past.

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15

It’s just my opinion. I’m more than happy to go with what the majority wants.

16

Breaking the Trump thread up would limit the best feature of this forum, which is the dynamic inline thread updates. When shit is hitting the fan you don’t even need to refresh. It sucks to have to go check multiple threads when I can do nothing and get new posts delivered to me.

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17

I’d like to clarify that my post quoted in OP was not in reference to post/content volume, but rather to Micro’s comment:

And I might as well add that I’m not necessarily agreeing that “it wouldn’t work at all” but that it would be a different forum experience. But that’s a different subject than this thread.

Editing to add: Now I’m looking at the thread again and it seems Micro’s whole point actually was about content volume. So LOL me I guess.

To go ahead and weigh in on the megathread question: I don’t care either way. Whatever works for the most people is fine with me.

18

Sorry if my tone came off as aggressive. Not my intention, and I’m also happy to go along with what people want.

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19

It’s both though. I was talking about how it’s hard to keep up with posts with this many people, but a stream of posts from people whose screen names I don’t recognize would be twitter responses or reddit and I’m rarely interested enough to read complete randoms. I don’t argue on Facebook either because I don’t want to do that with people I know irl. Semi-randoms is the sweet spot.

21

Something I’ve seen some subreddits do is break up their megathreads into daily or weekly threads. Maybe the trumpbot thread could be restarted daily? That way it could be the same type/amount of convo, just in smaller chunks for the folks who actually have lives (of which I am not one).

Honestly, this forum is great at keeping the amount of reposts and new threads low, but the trumpbot thread is beastly and really hard to keep up with.

22

We can’t lock the megathread because dominic hasn’t caught up on it yet

3 Likes
23

Here are three semi-contradictory thoughts:

  1. I am strongly in favor of mega-threads for their community-nurturing aspect

  2. TrumpBot feeds/needs a Trump mega-thread (agreeing with ggoreo)

  3. I would be thrilled if we turned off the TrumpBot

24

Thoughts on putting some sort of admin intro in the OP of megathreads to make them a bit more inviting to new users/readers? Something like:

Hi, we’re weird and never start new threads because we’re all lol olds and we hate change. Ignore the thousands of outdated posts here and just skip to the end. You’ll be up to speed in no time

.

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25

I’d phrase it more as in explaining the mega threads “focus more on community and conversation than in-depth discussion, and since the talk tends to follow the daily news you don’t need to start from the beginning (unless you want).”

1 Like
26

First draft. Feedback?

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Mega-thread Note

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Mega-threads are ongoing, loosely structured community conversations about daily news with thousands of replies. You should probably skip to the end rather than trying to read them all. Comments are frequent and topical so you can jump right into the conversation without worrying that you missed something important.

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27

Might need a better name for them. Or call them Kilo-threads if we’re being nitty.

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28

Think it was gregoreo who suggested (at 22 at some point) that reading the first few posts before skipping to the end was the best approach to dealing w a long thread you had not read.

It may seem obvious, but adding something like “After reading the first few posts” before the “you should skip to the end” part might be helpful

30

I like megathreads - all forums I use have them in one form or another and It’s usually pretty obvious what they’re for and how they work.

31

Is 500 posts in one thread really all that much worse than 100 posts across 5 different threads?

You can always just use the scroll bar on the side to skip to the last ~50 pots or so and start from there, and that’s easier to do in a megathread

32

yeah idc anymore and i’m just a casual user anyway

33

It‘s worse if (for now) you are only interested in the latest impeachment happenings and you don’t want to miss anything but can do without discussion of spelling errors or plans of alligator filled moats.

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