But that would prevent others from joining in at a later time. These threads, like Keith Richards, thrive on new blood, if for no other reason than the hazing of the newbies (by the way, guys. It's been two years. Can you stop now?).
May I pat myself on the back for figuring out why the limit was suggested? Foosinho, you're obviously more technical than I and expressed it much better. It sucks, but I can definitely see why mega threads are more load intensive than a whole bunch of smaller, little utilized ones. I enjoy the FFA things, although my visits to them are sporadic. Now, is anyone else seeing a business opportunity here? Who will solve this problem for us and let us invest in the new company that will sell this product? I'm kind of visualizing an approach right now, but I don't have the technical skills to do it myself.
Back from lunch. Those Atkins wraps at Subway are really starting to grow on me. Or off me, seeing as I've now lost 15 lbs. Sachin
It's exactly the issue. People who are saying people in the community type threads should just deal with it are projecting their expectations and use of Big Soccer onto others. Jesse allowed all of this up until yesterday, so forgive us for not understanding the intracacies of vBulletin. Much of the discussion has revolved around how the decision came down and the technical reasons by it and possibilities to find a middle ground. And regarding numbers of people in community-type threads, I found 20-25 online right now, that's not counting people invisible. There were 375 members online (and 400-some guests) at the time, so we're talking somewhere between 5 and 10 percent at that particular time being people who participate in these kinds of threads. Many of these people are near the top of the posts list, although that was skweed by FFA posts counting previously. In other words, this is not a majority, but it's hardly the useless minority that some portray it to be and it's not a bunch of yahoos just sucking up server space.
Come on, guys. You're making me hungry and I want to finish this thing for the ECG before I can leave.
I'm probably burning off a good deal of karma in this thread... No, it's not the issue. The issue is extremely long threads. There happens to be a very strong correlation between thread type and length. People like me are trying to present alternatives methods of fulfilling the needs of people posting in those threads. Understood, and agreed. I'm not privy to the real nitty-gritty - I'm surmising based on my personal experiences. I could be mistaken. I don't know that anyone has characterized these users as a "useless minority". Certainly not - I've notice that most of the people complaining about this are long time, respected users from my POV. But, they are a minority, and they are disproportionately using server resources to such a degree that it's impacting the experience of the other 90-95% of users. For NSR stuff, to boot (again, I love the NSR forums, and think they are important - just not more important than the soccer forums). That's a problem.
But all those take people off of Big Soccer, which created these communities. That's why people affected feel this pull and want to work with Jesse on a solution that involves Big Soccer. Nobody used those words, which is why I did not put them in quotes. But there are five major threads in this vein which probably account for close to or more than 100 people. Now, not all of them are on at one time, but the highest user count at one time is less than a thousand. But we were never told that in detail. It came as an arbitrary move with little to no explanation. To Jesse's credit, he has admitted things could have been handled better. He recognizes the contribution of the people affected. Others (not you) are being utter and complete ass-holes about it. If Jesse wants to listen to people like that, more power to him. But I think a compromise that allows people who return to this site for NSR and soccer discussion to stay here while reducing load on the servers is the optimum resolution - not a chat room, not a listserv, not another site.
Full disclosure: I don't particularly care for long community threads. I think they're just time-consuming to read. However, I think a very workable solution has already been hammered out. We can probably stipulate that many of the people on the community boards are precisely the same ones who spend a lot of time here, and therefore contribute a lot to the vibrancy of the community in general. I'll then assume that these same people, many of whom were willing to pay $30 a year to support the site, would be willing to do something relatively easy that helps the site perform better, uses less server space, which in turn costs less, which in turn gives the managers of the site more time and money to focus on stuff other than servers going down. If everyone on the community threads is made fully aware that ultra-long threads are a negative for the site as a whole, eventually a consensus should emerge in the community threads about the timing of starting the new version of the same old thread that people know and love. Huss has already shown that he's not particularly sensitive about the exact number, by offering to move it up three times already to mollify people. So there is flexibility. However, a 100-page thread is still extremely long, probably too long to be read in one sitting, unless every other post is monosyllabic and/or a smiley. The 100-page thread still uses up a disproportionate amount of resources. The 100-page thread is more difficult to navigate, and frankly much less convenient than ten 10-page threads, or 4 25-page threads. Keira's self-policing suggestion should work. However, leaving moderators the option to close threads for the good of the site remains important, even if just because of length. One of the highest expenses here is server space. Every user should want to keep unnecessary server usage down, and necessary server usage (like 10,000 people simultaneously logging on after a US win over Mexico) at as high a level as possible.
A couple years ago when BSSMs just went on and on and on they would crash and burn, never to be seen again. In an effort to combat this we limited ourselves to 1,000 pages. So that doesn't work anymore, ok. Lets cut it to only %20 of that. Lets give 200 pages a try for a few weeks. Maybe it still hurts the servers, so we cut it down farther. I think that's the easiest and fairest first step. If it doesn't work out we'll move on to other things. But an %80 cut in BSSM length (and more in the others that don't create new threads regularly) is I think a reasonable place to start.
This is our chief point of disagreement. From an outside point of view I would agree that 10-10 page threads are easier, but in the nature of the long threads they are MUCH MUCH less convenient. We are trying to keep conversations going between people with often wildly different schedules. one thread allows us to keep those conversations intact instead of cutting and pasting them from thread to thread. So this raises the question, what's better for the server? One 150 page thread or six 25 page threads that are often open in multiple windows? If someone can't post on a particularly active day that means several windows of threads actively being viewed by one person. Not to mention the extra work that Splarg has to put in to constantly close threads.
Is it that much work to close a thread? I honestly don't know. When someone in a community thread is away from their machine and misses 20 pages or so, do they actually read the whole part of the conversation that they've missed? Again, and honest question. In answer to which is better for the server, one 150-page thread or six 25-page threads, the six threads have to be better. Particularly because as time passes, everyone involved in the conversation will have already read the first 100 pages, and no one will care to be acessing the earlier ones anymore. Thanks for giving a reasoned response instead of calling an attempt at maximizing server usage an affront to your social activities and threatening to pull your PM dues.
It isn't, but I think the concern is that there are multiple community threads and only one mod. Yep. Those 25-page threads can be racked up pretty quickly and I think the fear is that the front of FFA will become nothing but multiple threads from these groups.
It is definitely better to have six 25 page threads. It the database calls and sorting of the query for the long threads that is brutal.
monster answered the other thing pretty well, and as far as the reading the 20 or so pages, that's a common occurance. At least in BSSM it is common practice to read every page, and if one is gone for a day or two that is easily 30 or 40 pages to read and remark upon. In fact it is totally common for someone to go on vacation for a week, and then read and comment on 150 - 200 pages of stuff they've missed in the week that they've been gone.
Would it be possible for the message board software to automatically close a thread once it's reached a set page limit? ----- I've been thinking about this the past couple of days and please bear with me cuz I don't know if I am going to explain it the way I see it in my mind... Would it be possible to have one continuously long ass thread but after X amount of pages...somehow the software takes those previous pages and "hides" them somewhere on BigSoccer memory...but a link of those previous pages is posted on the first post of the new section. Think of it like a big fat binder with page dividers. The pages of the binder are posts/pages and the page divider would be like the closure of those previous pages and the beginning of the next section before the next page divider. Uhhhh...did I make any sense?
like daisy chaining threads together? It would be cool if we responded to a post in an older thread and it automatically posted in the next thread down the line. That would solve a lot of the hassle of cut and pasting. I just don't know if it's possible to do.
Everything is possible, but I doubt that's in the code, and I've offered my programming talents to BSI before.
Keep the typical 1000 page thread like BSSM seperate from other volumes of BSSM and similar threads, but within each post whoring volume it would appear like the following.... I guess I'll use the term "chapter"... PostWhoreThread v. 1 Pages 1-20 (Chapter 1) After the last post on page 20, automatically compress those pages and all those pages just show up as a link in page 21. Pages 21-40 (Chapter 2) And so on and so on. After 1000 pages...lock the whole thing down and begin a new one.