Doom 3 Redux

Accualt

So G&T has a lot of Doom 3 threads, no big surprise there. We know a lot of people are going to post new and worthless threads about it so the mods over there can lock 'em up tight.
My issue are the regulars who keep bumping the worthless Doom 3 threads with AWESOME pictures and smart ass comments.
Should we one day jail them for it? I mean, really, they should know better. If they linky to the "real" Doom 3 or answer the question posed in teh thread thats aces but just trolling is not.

Since I'm not the mod over there I don't want to do anything without checking to see if it is cosher or not.

denihilist

I'll let the G&T mods answer that.

Accualt

I don't think any of them are around right now, which is part of the problem...we can't locky the threads without them.

denihilist

I see three Doom 3 threads in G&T, one of which is locked, the other hasn't been posted in since 2:43 this morning.

In short, you guys are chicken little and believe the sky is falling.

Accualt

apotheos

I've not noticed a problem. We did go "silly" on on thread, but I didn't see the harm in that. It was a silly thread from the first post.

But that was a few days ago.

I shall take a closer look at things.

apotheos

If someone wants to point out some incidents, I'd be happy to look at them. A superficial analysis gave no results..

I just pissed off everyone without Doom 3 by saying they should have it by now, and have created one holistic Doom 3 thread out of the rubble of their anguish.

I'll keep an eye on it, but I don't want to spoil the game.

Accualt

Its not bad, I was just annoyed by the forumers who complained about yet another Doom 3 thread but didn't do anything constructive. All they did was bump the thread.

denihilist

That is very frustrating to me as well.

Smasher

An unlocked thread with only mods posting in it? Can't have that...

Ignoring any technical aspects for a moment, has anyone given thought to making it possible to let people post in a thread without bumping it? It could give people a way to bitch about a thread without eternally giving it life, since we all know we're incapable of just letting it die.

Flipping it around, ignoring the wisdom or lack thereof of this idea, how difficult would this be to implement? I'm a developing code-monkey, so any insight into the way a heavily trafficked forum such as this one runs always intrigues me.

Ramius

I've given thought several times to merging the concept of a "flat" board like this one, with a "threaded" board like this one

But I'm pretty certain there is no graceful, user-friendly way of doing it. At least none that I'm happy with as of yet.




Answering your question directly, simply setting a flag on a thread to make it no longer bump would be fairly easy. Already the code supports it to some extent. Just look at threads that are moved, but with a shadow-topic left behind. The shadow topic doesn't bump.

I'm not sure that would be sufficient, though. I think that what we really want to do is more like what a threaded forum provides. That is, all the flame reply's travel down one branch of the conversation, and the on-topic/serious replies are in a separate branch. For topics in SE, where a single 11-page thread may have over a dozen subtopic-conversations within it, organizing those would be much more beneficial for people who don't care about one branch that the conversation has travelled down, but do care about all the others.

I can think of other instances where threading would be useful. For instance, you might have an on-topic thread where a single user makes an off-topic post. The moderator might reprimand the user in that thread, but then he is contributing to taking the thread further off track, and other users may decide to reply to the moderators post, ruining things all the more.

Dioretsa

Ramius wrote:

I've given thought several times to merging the concept of a "flat" board like this one, with a "threaded" board like this one

But I'm pretty certain there is no graceful, user-friendly way of doing it. At least none that I'm happy with as of yet.




Answering your question directly, simply setting a flag on a thread to make it no longer bump would be fairly easy. Already the code supports it to some extent. Just look at threads that are moved, but with a shadow-topic left behind. The shadow topic doesn't bump.

I'm not sure that would be sufficient, though. I think that what we really want to do is more like what a threaded forum provides. That is, all the flame reply's travel down one branch of the conversation, and the on-topic/serious replies are in a separate branch. For topics in SE, where a single 11-page thread may have over a dozen subtopic-conversations within it, organizing those would be much more beneficial for people who don't care about one branch that the conversation has travelled down, but do care about all the others.

I can think of other instances where threading would be useful. For instance, you might have an on-topic thread where a single user makes an off-topic post. The moderator might reprimand the user in that thread, but then he is contributing to taking the thread further off track, and other users may decide to reply to the moderators post, ruining things all the more.

This sounds a bit like the Futuremark forums http://discuss.futuremark.com. On there, you can switch between flat and threaded mode. The problem with their forums is that they have a reply button on every post, and if you want to reply to what someone said, you have to go back and find that specific post. You can't just reply to the whole thread.

It's annoying, because I read the entire thread first to see if anyone else has said what I was going to say. And if not, then I will reply. So I usually have to go back a page, then scroll down to find the post I want to reply to.

If that makes any sense at all. I know I'm not good at explaining myself very well.

Edit: Oh, I guess I should say that people will usually just reply to the post on the bottom, so trying to seperate things out doesn't work.

Ramius

actually, the threaded software I linked to in my post supports both flat and threaded views. And Penny-Arcade used to run it several years ago. It is not a bad product, but I'm not convinced that the benefits of threaded discussions outweighs the cost of the additional pageviews of viewing them, and the drawbacks like what you mentioned, of users not properly using the threading.

Bob Sapp

Ramius, that is a bad idea. Just makes things confusing.

Garlic Bread

Yeah, I have no idea what you're talking about.

And I hate threaded forums. Abhor them, even.

Red Machine D

Ramius wrote:

I've given thought several times to merging the concept of a "flat" board like this one, with a "threaded" board like this one

Dude. That's friggin' ugly. Please don't make our forums that ugly.

Artoria

Red Machine D wrote:

Ramius wrote:

I've given thought several times to merging the concept of a "flat" board like this one, with a "threaded" board like this one

Dude. That's friggin' ugly. Please don't make our forums that ugly.

I concure with this. I think the current board format is just fine.