An update on recent technical problems and more from the admin: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/250292/on-technical-difficulties-mod-coverage-and-other-things/p1?new=1
Options
Why did x megathread get locked?
Tube
Registered User admin
Registered User admin
We (the forum staff) periodically prune the forum of megathreads. It always causes a certain amount of strife. A megathread in this sense is defined as "A high traffic, recurring thread about an extremely broad topic". I've essentially given up on the idea that we'll ever have a forum free of this type of thread, but we try and limit them to a certain degree and certain threads get locked while others survive.
Here are some non-exhaustive reasons why we lock megathreads. These may or may not be true of any one particular thread.
1. They become cliquey. They end up with a core audience who do nothing but post in that one thread. Sometimes that "clique" is fine, and cliques are somewhat inevitable. Sometimes cliques are the worst parts of the community. For an extreme example of cliqueiness in a megathread, look at the D&D chat thread. The vast majority of its users don't post anywhere outside of that one thread, which is devoted to off-topic discussion. In a forum devoted to on-topic content. When there is a whole category dedicated to that.
It's notable, for instance, that it was suggested "if you want to talk about games, we have a whole forum for that" and people (as they always do), said "boo, I don't want to talk with those people, they're different and somehow worse than the people who click a different forum link a few inches down". They're not. They're people on a games community who want to talk about games.
2. They generate low quality content. Giant threads become more short form. They generate more traffic, but the discussion is less in depth. Not always true, but often is. This is more of an issue because of number 3.
3. They suck the life out of other threads and categories. It's always easier to gravitate towards one giant thread on a topic. Those threads always get bumped to the top of the forum, and become the defacto place to talk about that extremely wide topic. But the quality of the conversation isn't as good. The thread moves too fast, and it's hard to find the conversation you might be looking for. The megathreads become less like a forum and more like a chat room.
The biggest killer to GV's traffic, by far, is the superhero thread. It sucks up all the conversation about superheroes. But in that one superhero thread, you're never going to get a great, long-form conversation about The Question. If you do, no one will be able to find it. If it was in GV, people might see it on the front page and think "oh, I like The Question. I'll go read that thread and maybe contribute". Instead there's an amorphous, blobby thread about EVERYTHING THAT COULD BE TO DO WITH SUPERHEROES. And the conversation ends up being about... marvel movies, mostly. Because it's essentially a chat room, the most popular thing dominates the conversation. But then people say "I don't want to go to GV, there's no traffic", because the superhero thread eats all the traffic.
It's worth pointing out that more traffic is not what we're trying to achieve. If we were, we'd bring back the G&T chat thread. That had incredible traffic. We're trying to make a great community, whether it's 50 users or 50 000. Sometimes when you're building a garden, you have to prune back some plants so that others can live. The argument "but this plant is fucking huge, it must be a great plant, maybe the other plants should try harder" isn't convincing to me. The smaller plants don't get a chance to live.
This is a problem with SE in general, by the way. It's not one we can ever fully fix, but we're conscious of it and try our best to limit the negative effects. "My forum has too much traffic" is what is known in the community management field as "a rich man's problem."
4. Too many megathreads creates a cultural stasis. The front page never changes, because it's just 20 megathreads. The forum community at large might be perfectly comfortable with this, because humans try and create a community stasis wherever they go. It's a natural inclination that leads to a really dull culture in the long run
5. Sometimes megathreads are full of arseholes that constantly behave badly and are a huge bummer to deal with. Not always! But sometimes. Hi anime threads!
Why Do Some Threads NOT Get Locked
There are a few reasons! Bullet points!
1. The topic is narrow enough that the recurring status doesn't really matter. For example, the strength training thread. If we got rid of that thread, we wouldn't end up with a thread about power lifting, one about bodybuilding, one about delts etc. We wouldn't want that even if we did.
2. It removes some kind of source of hassle. This is why we have a youtube and webcomic thread. It would be more of a hassle to have threads about individual webcomics or constant "hey look at this funny youtube video" threads. In those cases, "post it in the youtube thread" is what we actually want
3. They're low traffic enough that we can realistically say "people would not be posting about this elsewhere". Locking these threads would not lead to a bunch of fun new discussion. For example: the indie games thread. The steam thread. Real world example! We locked the 3DS thread in G&T because it was a console megathread, and then brought it back because the net result was "nowhere to talk about the 3DS".
Section Heading
Essentially the important thing here is: we're not trying to come up with a blanket rule, because blanket rules are generally dumb. They're great to be able to look at and go "I understand this blanket rule now", but no good for actually running a community. This means that our decisions might frequently seem arbitrary in a way that they wouldn't if we could say "if you look at article C, section 3 of our rules you'd see that this is a clear breach". To me, that's a necessary compromise. The way we should get around it (and too often don't) is by trying to be clear in communicating when we do things.
Here are some non-exhaustive reasons why we lock megathreads. These may or may not be true of any one particular thread.
1. They become cliquey. They end up with a core audience who do nothing but post in that one thread. Sometimes that "clique" is fine, and cliques are somewhat inevitable. Sometimes cliques are the worst parts of the community. For an extreme example of cliqueiness in a megathread, look at the D&D chat thread. The vast majority of its users don't post anywhere outside of that one thread, which is devoted to off-topic discussion. In a forum devoted to on-topic content. When there is a whole category dedicated to that.
It's notable, for instance, that it was suggested "if you want to talk about games, we have a whole forum for that" and people (as they always do), said "boo, I don't want to talk with those people, they're different and somehow worse than the people who click a different forum link a few inches down". They're not. They're people on a games community who want to talk about games.
2. They generate low quality content. Giant threads become more short form. They generate more traffic, but the discussion is less in depth. Not always true, but often is. This is more of an issue because of number 3.
3. They suck the life out of other threads and categories. It's always easier to gravitate towards one giant thread on a topic. Those threads always get bumped to the top of the forum, and become the defacto place to talk about that extremely wide topic. But the quality of the conversation isn't as good. The thread moves too fast, and it's hard to find the conversation you might be looking for. The megathreads become less like a forum and more like a chat room.
The biggest killer to GV's traffic, by far, is the superhero thread. It sucks up all the conversation about superheroes. But in that one superhero thread, you're never going to get a great, long-form conversation about The Question. If you do, no one will be able to find it. If it was in GV, people might see it on the front page and think "oh, I like The Question. I'll go read that thread and maybe contribute". Instead there's an amorphous, blobby thread about EVERYTHING THAT COULD BE TO DO WITH SUPERHEROES. And the conversation ends up being about... marvel movies, mostly. Because it's essentially a chat room, the most popular thing dominates the conversation. But then people say "I don't want to go to GV, there's no traffic", because the superhero thread eats all the traffic.
It's worth pointing out that more traffic is not what we're trying to achieve. If we were, we'd bring back the G&T chat thread. That had incredible traffic. We're trying to make a great community, whether it's 50 users or 50 000. Sometimes when you're building a garden, you have to prune back some plants so that others can live. The argument "but this plant is fucking huge, it must be a great plant, maybe the other plants should try harder" isn't convincing to me. The smaller plants don't get a chance to live.
This is a problem with SE in general, by the way. It's not one we can ever fully fix, but we're conscious of it and try our best to limit the negative effects. "My forum has too much traffic" is what is known in the community management field as "a rich man's problem."
4. Too many megathreads creates a cultural stasis. The front page never changes, because it's just 20 megathreads. The forum community at large might be perfectly comfortable with this, because humans try and create a community stasis wherever they go. It's a natural inclination that leads to a really dull culture in the long run
5. Sometimes megathreads are full of arseholes that constantly behave badly and are a huge bummer to deal with. Not always! But sometimes. Hi anime threads!
Why Do Some Threads NOT Get Locked
There are a few reasons! Bullet points!
1. The topic is narrow enough that the recurring status doesn't really matter. For example, the strength training thread. If we got rid of that thread, we wouldn't end up with a thread about power lifting, one about bodybuilding, one about delts etc. We wouldn't want that even if we did.
2. It removes some kind of source of hassle. This is why we have a youtube and webcomic thread. It would be more of a hassle to have threads about individual webcomics or constant "hey look at this funny youtube video" threads. In those cases, "post it in the youtube thread" is what we actually want
3. They're low traffic enough that we can realistically say "people would not be posting about this elsewhere". Locking these threads would not lead to a bunch of fun new discussion. For example: the indie games thread. The steam thread. Real world example! We locked the 3DS thread in G&T because it was a console megathread, and then brought it back because the net result was "nowhere to talk about the 3DS".
Section Heading
Essentially the important thing here is: we're not trying to come up with a blanket rule, because blanket rules are generally dumb. They're great to be able to look at and go "I understand this blanket rule now", but no good for actually running a community. This means that our decisions might frequently seem arbitrary in a way that they wouldn't if we could say "if you look at article C, section 3 of our rules you'd see that this is a clear breach". To me, that's a necessary compromise. The way we should get around it (and too often don't) is by trying to be clear in communicating when we do things.
+18
Posts
you called out the superhero thread specifically as being a bad megathread that stifles the amount of activity in GV
so what is it that's keeping it around as opposed to the playstation thread?
http://www.audioentropy.com/
Joke #2: Of course the X megathread got locked, no anime threads allowed.
This is a great question! The answer is that the opportunity to knock console megathreads came up because of the new X Box thread being made. We went "oh shit, we are not on top of this issue" and quickly put a bandage on it. The superhero thread is something we're probably going to discuss, because I think it does cause problems.
I guess the real answer is "because we're not ready for that right now". It's a sucky, logistical answer that isn't fun or interesting to read, but it's the truth.
Mr. Media, look inside your encyclopaedia
2002, see Ice Cube.
Sure.
That's honestly the one that feels most random and confusing to me
Like, I've been posting in this sub forum for almost ten years. There are people here I know and like talking to, and SE has a specific feel that is different from G&T. And that is not to say that G&T is a bad forum or that they're bad people. But there's absolutely a different feel talking about a subject here versus there, because there have been communities that have built up over years in those specific places and also in this forum you are allowed to go on off topic tangents while there you are not. There are specific rules in place in one forum that does not allow that type of discussion.
So if I want to talk about the new zelda game but also start talking about...trains in zelda and trains in general, that is ok here but not in G&T. I don't know why I thought of trains as the tangent but you know, whatever.
So when I say "I would like to talk about Nintendo in SE and not G&T, it doesn't have a value associated with the people there, but with how the two forums act and are maintained.
No. Dozens of threads are locked every day, I'm not going to go through the criteria for each and every one. Moderators should be posting the whys of this, and this frequently isn't getting done. It's a consistent problem that needs to be brought up.
Honestly, a lot of the changes I wanted to put in place post Ask Tube are behind. That's a problem, and it's because I just haven't blocked out the time to do it.
The main reason I don't post in, for instance, G&T is sort of a self-fulfilling thing. The people I want to chat with don't post there, and by and large they don't post there because the people they want to chat with don't post there. I remember in the past there was a very strong animosity between different subforums, and while the vitriol has died down a bit that still feels like it's there, a bit. Do you guys ever talk about ways to encourage more subforum intermingling, or maybe more harshly, just get people to get the hell over themselves and post in other subforums? Do you ever talk about, say, banning all video game/comic book/pen and paper game threads from SE to force people to go to the dedicated subforums to talk about them? The closest thing I can think of to anything like that is the Christmas subforum, which is only for a few days out of the year and inevitably there's lots of grumps who just sulk until they can go back to whatever table they normally sit at in the lunchroom
http://www.audioentropy.com/
This actually does answer my question, just in a different way.
Thank you tube.
Essentially when it turns nasty or becomes us vs them. The two communities are more similar than they are different. SE is supposed to provide a different atmosphere to discuss things that can be discussed elsewhere, and it's good that it does. I can't fucking stand any "but THOSE guys are so DUMB.", no matter where I see it.
I've come to prefer the style of SE++. I'll post in G&T just fine, but that doesn't mean I think they are at all interchangeable.
That being said, can we have the Nintendo thread back? I need my speed amiibo collection fetish entertained while reading about a nearly dead console.
To a certain degree. We enthusiastically stomp on anyone who feeds intersubforum conflict. Otherwise, we really can't do much else. I think the holiday hangout once a year is a really great way of doing it, much more social engineering in that sense wouldn't achieve much.
It's a very real problem with SE. Simply shuttling that conversation out with topic bans isn't necessarily a good way to do it. I guess the short answer is "it is very complicated and we don't know the solution, there may not be one".
really more of a personal problem i know, but just wanted to say i agree with the tube hedgehog thing
HEY! The 3DS is still quite vibrant!
As it was noted in another thread, there's Witcher threads in G&T and here
The one here is mostly about the narrative and the characters, and the G&T Witcher thread is mostly about the gameplay mechanics
It's not always of course, but sometimes it is real different strokes what people want to talk about depending on where they're at
There is no reason you couldn't make the gnt thread have a narrative bent by talking about the narrative in it.
first post just being 'Fools they are getting away!'
I think that's what makes it complicated, and why they've never been able to give us clearly defined rules about when it is and isn't okay to have overlap. Like, in this case, the two threads are both serving a good purpose and, in a way, compliment each other, rather than compete.
I should use the bookmarking system more to customize a front-page of threads I check.
I dunno. I'm not specifically opposed to going to GV for my comics-related conversations. I just enjoy the flow of the thread in SE way more.
And if I knew that, for instance, a dozen-odd SE posters were all just going to start talking there now, I'd be pretty fine with that, as it would be a matter of integrating two groups.
Capcom announced the Resident Evil 2 remake and I don't know where I should go to tell people about it!
I am adrift!
"We're not ready" is the entire justification that I consider we need. When we do things without being ready, it fucks everything up.
I've seen this on other forums and it seemed to work well. People who congregate in one specific subforum go into the topic and they're automagically transported to a different one, but because they can click it in their subforum the other one gets a new influx and maybe they'll check out the rest.
This would probably be kind of complicated and tedious to set up though.
"Being the last straw" is, like, the Xbone's entire raison d'etre.
I'm totally making a thread for the new interface of the Xbox One when it gets released to preview program people.
Would that be ok?
Not to say that it doesn't have issues though
PSN- AHermano
I feel like I've been here for an eternity but I can safely say y'all are doing a bang up job and the forums are better than they've ever been. it warms my heart to know that this place is still rocking and rolling and full of community members and staff that really care about it.
This place could just as easily not exist again instead of being actively used and moderated. So yeah keep doing what you're doing!