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Megathreads: love 'em? hate 'em? want them all to go away and leave you in peace?
Thirith
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I've been on another broadly games-related forum for the last 10+ years, and it's very much seen its heydays. Over the last few years, activity has gone down considerably, and the number of regular posters has decreased a lot.
We've got a bunch of megathreads (ongoing threads on general topics along the lines of the movies thread we've got here), including a general games thread, and recently there's been discussion there about whether the megathreads suck what activity there is out of other threads, decreasing overall activity, since there are some people that dislike megathreads or don't see their point and who avoid them accordingly. Others, including me, have argued that the conversation you get in megathreads tends to be different from other, more specific threads - more chat-like and associative, more dynamic, broader but less likely to go into detail - and that because there's more activity in megathreads, they may be keeping some of the areas of the message board alive to some extent.
I've found myself rather confounded that there are some people who very much dislike megathreads - not just participating in them, but their very existence. Obviously I don't have much in the way of empirical evidence, but my impression has always been that while megathreads may require more moderation, they complement other, more specific discussions rather than subsuming them. Yet I don't have anything to go by other than my opinions and intuition.
What's your take on megathreads? Do you like them, dislike them? Do you take part in them? For you, do they complement other, more specific threads, or do you mainly post in megathreads? What's your experience with them on boards other than this one (since I imagine that the generally very high level of activity here changes the picture somewhat)? And what's the best way of handling them? (Any experience by moderators, whether they mod these forums or any others, would be much appreciated.)
We've got a bunch of megathreads (ongoing threads on general topics along the lines of the movies thread we've got here), including a general games thread, and recently there's been discussion there about whether the megathreads suck what activity there is out of other threads, decreasing overall activity, since there are some people that dislike megathreads or don't see their point and who avoid them accordingly. Others, including me, have argued that the conversation you get in megathreads tends to be different from other, more specific threads - more chat-like and associative, more dynamic, broader but less likely to go into detail - and that because there's more activity in megathreads, they may be keeping some of the areas of the message board alive to some extent.
I've found myself rather confounded that there are some people who very much dislike megathreads - not just participating in them, but their very existence. Obviously I don't have much in the way of empirical evidence, but my impression has always been that while megathreads may require more moderation, they complement other, more specific discussions rather than subsuming them. Yet I don't have anything to go by other than my opinions and intuition.
What's your take on megathreads? Do you like them, dislike them? Do you take part in them? For you, do they complement other, more specific threads, or do you mainly post in megathreads? What's your experience with them on boards other than this one (since I imagine that the generally very high level of activity here changes the picture somewhat)? And what's the best way of handling them? (Any experience by moderators, whether they mod these forums or any others, would be much appreciated.)
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
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Firstly, it means that conversations are so broad that you either end up repeating sub-topics (example; Nintendo mega thread, the same games will keep coming up as new users get onboard), secondly because they condense so many conversations that it can become an avalanche of posts to try to keep up with. As someone who does actually read entire threads from start to finish, having 5 or 10 pages on a specific topic is vastly easier to keep tabs on than plowing through 80 pages in a megathread that waffles across a half dozen topics of varying interest.
The latter is a big part of what keeps me out of [Chat] threads and SE++; there's just too much content being produced on a given day to keep tabs of it all.
To add to what I wrote before: while I like a good specific discussion, I very much like the freeflow association that goes on in the movies thread, for instance. Sometimes it's extremely flighty, but then you sometimes get pockets of specific discussion that result from posts. At the same time, while the movies thread here is pretty much ideal for what I'm looking for, it is entirely dependent on the number and level of activity of people who contribute to it and the mods' judicious use of their powers if it needs to be pruned. The same concept may fail miserably on a different forum.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
The danger of the megathread is that it turns into a [chat] thread. The [chat] thread in D&D MOVES... like, it reaches 100 pages every day. And not many people are in there, either!
By contrast, the Vita has a megathread, for example, in G&T. This is because there are fewer Vita enthusiasts than most consoles, and the conversation doesn't advance by more than a page or two every day, so you can easily catch up even if you've been gone for a week.
On the other forum I mentioned, someone compared megathreads to slow-motion IRC, which I can subscribe to. I'd say that due to the nature of chat, there's no need to read every single post in a thread and it's silly to let that intimidate anyone, but then I am a completist when it comes to the movies thread and get somewhat stressed when there's a huge amount of activity over night, so who am I to talk...
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Folks all know each other. Half of it is just in-house referencing of the other half of personal interactions IRL and/or on social/electronic media.
Whether this is a bug or a feature
Here's the question I'd ask you to start with - can you give some examples of megathreads you actively contribute to, where you also contribute to specific threads dealing with one aspect of the mega?
Also take a look at the Hillary and Sanders threads recently. It was effectively impossible to discuss Sanders without Clinton, and the most pressing news regarding Clinton involved Sanders. You can talk about Heroes of the Storm without talking about Starcraft 2, so a Blizzard megathread makes no sense. But D&D topics are often interconnected. Even stuff like the Marvel Cinematic Universe crosses over quite a bit so an Antman thread will likely reference the Avengers and Agents of Shield etc.
When topics diverge from the stated topic, split them into Goddamn Separate Threads. But I don't think they're necessary for everything.
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edit: and it's about 100pgs every 36-50 hours depending on when the weekend falls.
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Threads hitting 50 pages in an hour. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.
Seriously. 50 pages. One hour. Crazy times.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
geeze. do you remember what thread that was? that sounds insane.
per the topic, i like the megathreads within reason. like in se++ i've been posting in the jurp thread a bit about tales of xillia and persona and final fantasy and stuff, probably none of which would have been talked about if there wasn't a big ol jurp thread since on it's own, none of it would be big enough to sustain conversation.
In fact, when you see a normally slow moving thread suddenly jump 100 posts in a few hours, it's probably because somebody provided a controversial opinion. If it's a politics thread, something like "so you know, I just read Atlas Shrugged, and I think this Rand gal has a point." If it's movies, probably "I just watched Prometheus - does anybody have an opinion on that film?"
The mod theory here regarding megathreads tends to run as follows:
Megathreads tend to be okay for broad discussion of broad topics at the expense of in depth discussion or more obscure topics. If, for example, you just watched a little indie film and have the misfortune of posting on the movies thread just before someone brings up Prometheus, your post is going to be swallowed and nobody will ever see it. Ditto with any other kind of megathreads that have a moderately high post count.
At the same time, a megathread has the advantage of allowing for a more free-form discussion. A conversation that starts with chatter about The Wolf of Wall Street, tangents into DiCaprio's best roles, stops for a bit on Django Unchained, and then goes into whether Tarantino creates homages or more reimaginings of classical film genres, is not a conversation that can happen outside a megathread without mods demanding that you get on topic.
What seems to work best, in my estimation, is a mix of the two - avoiding megathreads in general, but allowing them in cases where a free from discussion style is especially valuable. This means sometimes a megathread can be an Anything But X thread. The movies thread, then, is a thread for discussion of anything BUT the MCU and maybe whatever new hotness is drawing all the attention, for example.
(Also, megathreads can get super cliquey if you're not careful, so that's another possible ding.)
I guess? I mean, you're in the club, Spool. The only reason you don't get it worse is that PAX and being in IT and knowing folks personally and 13 and 15, and now BC, humanize you.
I've got a toe in the door, but i don't do pax or live in the right areas so it's not going to happen. I've realized I'm okay with that. At one point i took some time off while i thought about it.
Thing is though if Tube exploded chat, that doesn't help new people join in, that just destroys the avenue entirely, and you guys would fuck off to facebook and xbox and whatever to continue your friendships.
So, he can't really destroy your friendships, but he can't really make anyone invite newbies into the club either. And yet, i still root for some folks in chat and I'm happy to see good news about them. Shuttering chat is a net loss, the way i see it.
Interesting point re: megathreads and their potential to get cliquey. I Find the sociological and sociolinguistic facets of online communities fascinating, but there are definitely tricky or even problematic elements that need to be handled carefully. El Jeffe (or any other mods), is this something that you try to counteract in certain ways?
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
While a post about some obscure little indie you just watched has a chance to get swallowed by a megathread, at the same time that same obscure little indie probably doesn't deserve an individual thread. So it can many times be a choice between sharing an opinion that may get ignored in a megathread or not sharing that opinion at all. It's one of the reasons I really like having the megathreads around. They lend themselves to the more minor tangential topics that otherwise wouldn't get discussed at all.
Oh you also frequent the Steam Thread?
I think the same thing can happen to more specific threads too though. I mean, you have a thread about a specific show and you are gonna be pretty certain that it's quickly going to be full of nothing but fans of that show cause, like, who else bothers to go in there. And so you end up with cliquey behaviour anyway since the thread is self-selecting and from that eventually forms it's own culture. Really I think it's the result of any long-running thread.
The answer really isn't too surprising when you think about it. Smaller threads that are more tightly focused are easier to engage in than large unwieldy threads. One thread with 100s of posts to read every time you turn around about everything under X topic, most of which you don't really care about, vs 10 threads with 10s of posts every time you refresh where you can choose exactly what you want to talk about.
The opening made me squirm in my seat. Very uncomfortable.
We like new people!
Chanus will agree with your posts.
I hear they have gift baskets now.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
I appreciate your use of metaphor to describe the nuances of megathreads. I have often felt that walking the fine line between smaller threads and larger, broader threads is much like performing complicated surgery while people bitch in my ear about their silly personal problems!
Or maybe people were just teasing me about the show having an epic cast bodycount for a medical drama (I have never actually watched it).
Didn't the HL2 thread just explode right before/during it coming out?
No Grey's Anatomy is a slow-motion snuff film disguised as a medical primetime soap opera.
That's what I was told. So weird. I may have to watch it someday.
I didn't even mention the worst (...or best?) case I ever saw - when Half-Life 2 unlocked on Steam.
We went through several 50-page threads in an hour as people excitedly reported their percentage while staring at Steam decrypting the preloaded files.
And just for the record: no, this isn't my attempt to bring a TV chat thread into existence through the backdoor. :P
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I find that on smaller boards megathreads tend to cannibalize smaller threads, resulting in only long threads which in turn puts off new people. The fact that these boards are so active is probably why the two can co-exist here.
being a man of discernment @Elki was referring to this rad movie, not some awful ABC drama
Who knew one letter could make such a big a difference?
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I was confused, because at first I assumed the "both" you were talking about were Gray's Anatomy and Grey's Anatomy.