creating a thread is so expensive
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@remi said in Update on Administration & Community Changes:
Which actually also highlights something that, to me, is specific to this community: creating a thread is so expensive
Why is it? Is people too shy to create a new topic, and as a post gets less attention they are more comfortable with it?
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Some things just don't warrant their own topic when there's a megatopic already.
For example: a short news article about some new Elon Musk incident, or another Tesla crashing into an emergency vehicle. It's not going to spark a long discussion. People will read it, maybe make a short reply taking the piss, and then move on. Doesn't need its own thread as that'd result in hundreds of invidiual threads scattered around with a handful of replies all for the same topic.
Obviously there's nothing stopping someone creating a new thread if they want.
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This was the first reference I found using NodeBB search about threads being free (from July 2016):
@blakeyrat said in Blakeyrat Reads StackOverflow While Bored At Work:
@izzion said in Blakeyrat Reads StackOverflow While Bored At Work:
"Ok, so I'm not @blakeyrat, but this feels like a good fit for this thread:"You're wrong.
Make your own thread. They're free.
I don't believe it was the genesis of the meme, though. I want to say that it was started by @ben_lubar.
I couldn't find anything earlier using google, but the original phrasing might have been different.
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@loopback0 said in creating a thread is so expensive:
Doesn't need its own thread as that'd result in hundreds of invidiual threads scattered around with a handful of replies all for the same topic.
So you have a preference for reading a few megatopics than hundreds of individual small threads?
On the other hand, I think uninteresting threads disappear quite quickly from the list, as people don't reply them, and I lose a lot of interesting stuff in the megatopics as I can't read it all.
Maybe categories could make it better, if megatopics weren't an option? If we didn't have megatopics I think a bad ideas category would be cool.
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@sockpuppet7 said in creating a thread is so expensive:
@loopback0 said in creating a thread is so expensive:
Doesn't need its own thread as that'd result in hundreds of invidiual threads scattered around with a handful of replies all for the same topic.
So you have a preference for reading a few megatopics than hundreds of individual small threads?
On the other hand, I think uninteresting threads disappear quite quickly from the list, as people don't reply them, and I lose a lot of interesting stuff in the megatopics as I can't read it all.
Maybe categories could make it better, if megatopics weren't an option? If we didn't have megatopics I think a bad ideas category would be cool.
I like the megatopics. I'd rather scroll through what I've missed than digging around a bunch of small threads. As long as the megatopic stays mostly-kind-of on topic.
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@sockpuppet7 said in creating a thread is so expensive:
If we didn't have megatopics
We would have megacategories
I lose a lot of interesting stuff in the megatopics
That problem can probably be solved by having the Popcorn button (like Song of the Day). Whether it then forces all discussions into another megatopic (like song comments) or creates another thread (perhaps the referring post id can be used to see if a thread about that particular post exists) is then something to further bikeshed about.
On the other hand, creating a thread about everything (such as "in other news" item) - do you really think it will prevent anybody from chatting about life, universe and everything in them? It will be threads all the way down, down to single-post denvercoding.
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@sockpuppet7 said in creating a thread is so expensive:
Maybe categories could make it better, if megatopics weren't an option? If we didn't have megatopics I think a bad ideas category would be cool.
I thought about suggesting that, but actually I think there are many cases where it wouldn't work.
For example, the Funny stuff thread is mostly individual posts (very few have significant follow-ups and when they do they often get Jeffed), so making it into a category would cause billions of one-posts that would be more tedious to read than the mega-thread. That is, unless we had some way of looking at all threads of a category without specifically opening them one by one (e.g. if the page with the list of threads had a full preview of the first post), so maybe there is a technical solution to that, but it would need more than just its own category (plus we already have a "funny stuff" category!). OTOH, having a mega-thread for those isn't really an issue, you can just jump in anywhere and read from there. Maybe just a tweak so that the first view lands you not-too-far-back-in-time rather than at first post would be enough.
Another kind of mega-threads (or simply old ones) is the 3D printing thread. In that one, even though there are several sub-threads that could go into their own thread (in a special category), there are also recurrent things that cross several sub-threads (at least I think so, I'm not reading that one very closely... but that applies to other threads, mostly the garage ones but not only). Forcing a split into different threads would be detrimental to the discussion, I think.
OTOH, there are indeed several threads where splitting would probably work reasonably well. The UI bites (most "bites" threads), maybe the "other news" etc. New posts generate sub-threads that are usually totally independent from the previous one (sometimes mixing with it) and the sub-threads are sometimes (not always, but regularly enough to make it work) long enough to warrant their own thread in most places (i.e. more than just 2-3 posts). So maybe we could just and change the "bites" threads into (sub-)categories?
So I guess what I'm saying is that focusing on the "mega" part and trying to forcefully break it might be the wrong approach here (basically what @end tried, and failed, to do). Which is why I mentioned the "no new threads" thing as IMO it's more relevant to the culture of this forum than the length of the threads themselves.
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@remi said in creating a thread is so expensive:
That is, unless we had some way of looking at all threads of a category without specifically opening them one by one
One thing that was nice in Discourse was the list of "related" threads that you'd get when you got to the bottom of a thread you were reading.
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@boomzilla said in creating a thread is so expensive:
@remi said in creating a thread is so expensive:
That is, unless we had some way of looking at all threads of a category without specifically opening them one by one
One thing that was nice in Discourse was the list of "related" threads that you'd get when you got to the bottom of a thread you were reading.
It was a nice idea, but IIRC in practice it didn't work that well
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@sockpuppet7 said in creating a thread is so expensive:
So you have a preference for reading a few megatopics than hundreds of individual small threads?
On the same topic, yeah.
@sockpuppet7 said in creating a thread is so expensive:
Maybe categories could make it better, if megatopics weren't an option?
Yeah and that's how a lot of forums do it but it often ends up in far too many very specific categories, and that isn't always an improvement IMO.
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@hungrier said in creating a thread is so expensive:
@boomzilla said in creating a thread is so expensive:
@remi said in creating a thread is so expensive:
That is, unless we had some way of looking at all threads of a category without specifically opening them one by one
One thing that was nice in Discourse was the list of "related" threads that you'd get when you got to the bottom of a thread you were reading.
It was a nice idea, but IIRC in practice it didn't work that well
It worked to the extent that you could keep reading unread stuff without having to go back to a separate page that listed threads.
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@loopback0 said in creating a thread is so expensive:
Yeah and that's how a lot of forums do it but it often ends up in far too many very specific categories, and that isn't always an improvement IMO.
It would add a lot of maintenance, depending on how granular the megathread replacement categories would be. E.g. right now we've got two (major) Covid threads, one in garage and one in general. Would that need two separate categories, to keep the garage-ish content out of the main covid category?
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I just had another thought that I think I've mentioned before. Years ago, one forum that I went to changed from separate categories to GMail-like tags. So when creating a topic, the OP could tag it with any combination of e.g. "general", "politics", "nsfw", whatever. There would also be more specific sub tags (e.g. cartoons -> anime -> pokemon) which would automatically apply all the ancestor tags to the topic. Some of the tags would have special technical rules applied as well: one category anonymized everyone's username and avatar, keeping them consistent only within each thread.
The topic list would default to the general tag, but you could also browse individual tags or setup tag combinations. Users could also suggest tags for each topic, and the OP would be able to accept or reject them. It was a pretty jarring change when it first happened, but over time everyone got used to it and I think it was good for the forum overall.
Also, as another point of interest, for historical reasons topics had a hard upper limit on number of posts. There were megathreads, and whenever they would approach the limit someone (either the original OP or another user) would create a "sequel" megathread to continue the discussion.
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@hungrier said in creating a thread is so expensive:
Also, as another point of interest, for historical reasons topics had a hard upper limit on number of posts. There were megathreads, and whenever they would approach the limit someone (either the original OP or another user) would create a "sequel" megathread to continue the discussion.
OK Jeff
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@hungrier said in creating a thread is so expensive:
Also, as another point of interest, for historical reasons topics had a hard upper limit on number of posts. There were megathreads, and whenever they would approach the limit someone (either the original OP or another user) would create a "sequel" megathread to continue the discussion.
At least the one I was familiar with the sequels would often have funny names. And the last page or so (paginated forums!) were devoted to deciding on what that new name should be.
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Another thing about threads, categories and tags (as mentioned by @hungrier) is that in practice, any sort of classification that requires a human effort works very poorly in conversation.
I guess that's another lesson that should have been learnt from the Usenet days (but that clearly wasn't...), where you also had tags (which was purely a convention of putting [STUFF] in the subject), and separate groups, but some people spent an awful lot of time trying to police that, and failing consistently.
As soon as you require posters to do something about their posts to get them correctly classified, they will get it wrong or not do it, either out of
(#1 reason I think), or 
("I thought that my post was about fooso I added that tag but it actually means something else"), or
(malice, trollishness...).I believe this is also the reason why threads actually are expensive, in terms of user-interaction at least. It's more work to click new, type a title and pick a category, then type your post, than to click reply and type straight away.
So whatever ends up being done, it would be good to remember that any user action, even a single click, will simply not be done (unless there is a stringent peer-pressure/policing).
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The real question is whether or not we need half a dozen or so threads discussing the same thing (here: megathreads).
Making the megathreads more approachable: good. I like the megathreads, so policing them out of existence isn't something I would look forward to. (FWIW: there's at least one mega-ish-thread that comes from the CS times and predates both
and NodeBB: the one with Swampy.)
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@cvi said in creating a thread is so expensive:
The real question is whether or not we need half a dozen or so threads discussing the same thing (here: megathreads).
Maybe Alex can jeff them into one megathread.
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@loopback0 said in creating a thread is so expensive:
Maybe Alex can jeff them into one megathread.
One we get some kind of policy firmed up, for sure.
We're had been making good progress in the "Secret talks" on this, and I think "retroactively applying" the policies to metagopics will be good training for us.
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So was Jeff right?
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@pie_flavor At least he captured nicely some quirks human behavior, regarding threading.
I've been missing the feature where replies to a post can be in another topic, and still be linked below the replied-to post. ( INB4 someone tells me it's been added to NodeBB already. )
In this way, creating a thread is expensive, if it's created to branch from another thread, to answer a post. Because you then have to separately flag-wave, or people are going to think you just let that rude remark slide (
) when your answer isn't visible in the original thread.
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@apapadimoulis said in creating a thread is so expensive:
We're had been making good progress in the "Secret talks" on this, and I think "retroactively applying" the policies to metagopics will be good training for us.
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@boomzilla it's going to be fun!
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@apapadimoulis But not Fun?
Filed under: Didn't we have a dwarf fortress emoji?
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@acrow said in creating a thread is so expensive:
INB4 someone tells me it's been added to NodeBB already. )
Technically yes, but only if done in the way the devs want you to. Deviation from the route (or cosmic rays etc) will result in transparent failure.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in creating a thread is so expensive:
@acrow said in creating a thread is so expensive:
INB4 someone tells me it's been added to NodeBB already. )
Technically yes, but only if done in the way the devs want you to. Deviation from the route (or cosmic rays etc) will result in transparent failure.
Ohhkay...
Care to elucidate on the correct methodology?
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@acrow said in creating a thread is so expensive:
@Tsaukpaetra said in creating a thread is so expensive:
@acrow said in creating a thread is so expensive:
INB4 someone tells me it's been added to NodeBB already. )
Technically yes, but only if done in the way the devs want you to. Deviation from the route (or cosmic rays etc) will result in transparent failure.
Ohhkay...
Care to elucidate on the correct methodology?Damn, I guess it broke. Last time it was, start a reply-in-new-topic, minimize the composer (if on mobile), then click the Reply button on the same post. Then post the transparently-modified post.
Imma try again to be sure...
Edit: nope. Definitely "fixed" so that doesn't work anymore...
