Long Threads

So if I spend a week's vacation at Mandalay Bay I'm going mostly for the gambling. That's it's purpose and that's what I'm going for. But then I discover the pool and all the hotties. So because of the pool and the gambling I decide to stay longer. And then after I pay for my extended stay the hotel manager comes to me and says that he's shutting down the pool because Mandalay Bay is a "gambling" establishment. I still apreciate the gambling, but the pool is still a large factor of why I decided to spend my time and money there. I'm no longer getting what I payed for.

And if it is for technical reasons why not fill us in and give us some warning?

 

How are Crew fans going to get Andrulis fired if they are limited to 350 posts?

 

Stupid analogy. FFA still exists. Threads in FFA still exist. You're not being limited in the number of posts you write or the number of threads you read. We can haggle over the proper number limit, but what's so important to the spirit of FFA about 2,000-page threads?

 

I'll throw in my .02c. Although you guys may think that those gigantic 10k post long 1k long page long threads sponsor some sort of spirit of community they also can be highly exclusionary. I'm not really on here to make friends or feel like I'm part of anything, I just want to talk soccer. However sometimes I'll get bored and head over to the FFA, but it's not too easy to get yourself caught up or included in a discussion when you're begining it on page 1,356. To me it seems horriably cliquey and maybe this new rule will help loosen things up a little bit. That or maybe you guys can simply cut down on the "First Page. Page Turn or Goodmorning/Goodnight" posts I see in there.

 

This post is just beyond description.
https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showpost.php?p=2490636&postcount=44

 

I wasn't talking about the nature of the people I was talking about the readability or lack there of the threads. You guys seem to be chugging along quite well so far under the new policy and maybe if you guys are so set on preserving things for posterity it'll be much able to follow conversations that you may have missed or what have you. I personally think getting up in arms about this is ludacris but hey, whatever floats your boat.

 

Here's my take on it.

Usually (9/10 times), the threads are "all welcome, don't act like an ass" policy. Just dive in.

The lock policy is really dumb. Unless you want to see 5 B@W threads on the first page.

If you're clogging server space, dump forums, like the ones for the 2003 WWC, or the radio show forums.

Make it into something like this. (note - not exactly, general idea)

Business, Media, Entertainment
-B&M General
-TV
--FSW
-Radio
-Other

Women's Soccer
-General (tournaments, general chat, etc.)
-International (national teams, tournaments, etc.)
-USA (general chat about usa)
--National Team (Mitts, Fair, Chastain, etc.)
--National Leagues (W-League, etc.)

Maybe the B&M is fine...

I know I probably shouldn't speak on the women's forums, but you'd have to think that keeping forums around from an event last year that get no traffic probably clog some server space. Plus it's a bit odd...

Seems like some forum categories could be re-arranged/cleaned up to clear space.

 

Just seems like that's pruning at the edges when you've got multipe thousand page long threads floating around that basically are just chat room banter. But again doesn't seem like there's any reason for the content of what you guys talk about is going to be cut down just the way you do it. I've seen talk about 'threatening the BSSM friendships' seems to me that if they're that strong they can survive a couple of extra clicks on a mouse...

 

Look, this is bigsoccer and there is no reason to bring in things like facts and logic into play. Please refrain from this sort of behavior or we'll revoke your membership.

 

I seriously doubt that space the ancient, unused or lightly used forums is what Huss is trying to address. I'm guessing that the overhead required by the software and operating systems grows, maybe not exponentially, but significantly, as the thread grows.

 

How 'bout this for a compromise.

Ask the heavily-posted clique threads to create a new thread every day. The ones that aren't quite so busy can create a new one every three days or every week or whatever works. Don't worry about a limit for the number of posts in these threads, because you know they won't get to 20,000 or whatever. The people in those threads then won't have to worry about the threads getting locked at irregular times.

 

I detect some serious forum geekitis.

Community spazzes might want to head over to xtratame. The post limit in fluffy parrot land is very high per thread...

 

BSSM has been around for over three years, with most of the threads being 1000 pages apiece. And yet, server issues didn't start until now? Forgive me if I find that hard to believe. If 1000 page threads caused server problems, they likely would have caused server problems long before now, as we've certainly had plenty of 1000 page threads.

But even if I'm wrong about that, I'm right about one thing: it's just not good business sense to piss off your best customers. I did that myself once, back when I owned my own business, and the results weren't pretty.

 

I find it very hard to believe that multiple threads about the one thing, each with 350 posts, would be preferred to one single thread with more posts… it doesn't sound logical to me. Surely it would be much easier for people to search through one topic rather then search through multiple topics about the one thing!

Now I can't comment on the technical side of things, however I will say that I've hardly had any problems with server busy messages and I'm not a premium member, and don't plan to become one if this kind of "logical" decision making is applied to this site.

The points about the BigSoccer community have been raised before and I agree with them. It just seems to me that not much thought has gone into this, and that is surprising considering how well this site has been run during my time on here.

Here’s hoping logic will prevail in this one.

 

yep 5 new 350 post threads every 2 days will be soooooooo much better. brilliant.

 

Now that I've had time to cool down I would just like to say again how dissapointed and unhappy I am at this move. The long FFA threads are open and inclusive communities comprised of some of Big Soccer's best customers. Customers that were quick to come to Huss' aid when he asked us to subscribe. And it is very dissapointing to see such cavalier disregard as he singles out those very people that were there for him and this site a few years ago. I can only assume that after so many hits in April our patronage and goodwill is no longer needed or sought.

 

I'll step in for Huss here.

The reason for the change was technical, not managerial. If you would like to read one of the developers of our boards software says about this topic please go here: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=103711. Basically, everytime one of these threads is viewed or posted to, the database takes a massive hit. These long threads tend to be used by a small number of people yet take an incredible amount of resources.

When looking at our options, we realized that these threads with thousands of posts were only used for the most recent posts. In other words, the first few thousand (or ten thousand) posts or pages were never being viewed. People were just going to the last page and adding a post. The only difference between these threads and any others is that there is a very large number on the forumdisplay page.

I just can't see how anyone is being 'Royally Screwed'. These posts are still there. You still have your history. If you ever feel like going to page 1,046 of one of these threads you can. No one is being singled out. This policy will be site wide. BigSoccer appreciates every single user be they guests, members of supporters.

I have yet to see anyone who can explain how things are any different or how this changes anything. We could have been deleting pages 20-500 of a 100 page post and no one would have noticed. I agree that it could have been handled better in terms of announcements and preparation, but you can't really think that there is a bottomless limit to how long a thread can be. Sooner or later it wil break the boards.

If you would like, we can turn this off and give you an advance warning so that you can have a chance to put these long threads to rest.

 

It says that the threadposts take up more memmory, but doesn't give any info on what a cutoff point should be. Why not compromise with something like 2,250 or 3,000 posts? That's 150 or 200 pages. That would mean a couple of weeks between new threads and we'd police it ourselves the way we currently police the 1.000 page limit in BSSM. If nothing else that would stop Capt. Splarg from having to lock a half dozen threads every day.

 

The difference is you took the time to explain it. Your explanation makes sense and speaking for myself if it was given prior to the change there might not have been such a big stink.

I'm sorry but HUSS has a habit of being stingy with the info.

Thanks for letting us know why. Frankly on a board where you ask people to contribute money you should make it a policy to give as much information as can as soon as you can.

 

I would agree with you about sharing information. To be honest, as you can imagine the suggestions forum can tend to attract complaints more than suggestions. Trying to run a site where the users have an open forum to discuss any changes can be very frustrating. I actually suggested to Huss that he stay out of the fray for a bit until things settle down and people calm.

One thing everyone here should also know is that we aren't afraid to make changes to the site to accomodate our users. We have made many changes that we thought were the best and turned out to be mistakes. We have made others that were hated at first but people also grew to love. Nothing is ever set in stone and we are looking for compromises that meet everyone's needs as best as possible. This specific forum is for suggestions and we value suggestions as well as constructive criticism. We try to respond to suggestions and we have little choice but to ignore straight-forward complaints.

One thing I will promise you - no one at BigSoccer is making any decisions out of spite or to hurt some individual or some group. Believe me when I tell you that we are doing the best we can with what we have to work with and everything is done with the best of intentions. Being accused of 'Royally Screwing' someone 'like a $10 whore' will do nothing except ruffle feathers and cause us to ignore anything worthwhile one may be saying.

 

Thank you for the explanation JonnyQuest.

If I could make a suggestion... when one of these threads is locked by a moderator once it's reached 350 posts, could that moderator start the next thread by posting a link to the previous thread in the initial post? This could at least make things easier for people wanting to follow the most recent posts within a topic, rather then having to do a search for the other thread. And if there's more then one thread like the BSSM ones, the first post could contain all the links to their previous threads.

Granted it's not the most ideal of situations, but it is a compromise, and works within what is available to us at the moment.

 

Irony is getting a 'server busy' message while trying to read the last page of this post.