Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

So how long IS too long for a thread.

<< < (2/6) > >>

app103:
How do you know when a thread has gone on too long? When you compare the discussion on page 15 to page 1 and find they are totally unrelated.  :D

CWuestefeld:
A thread is too long when people can't be bothered reading the whole thing before jumping in. And the evidence of this is multiple posts making the same point. You can see this all the time on slashdot, or the comment stream of articles at the Volokh Conspiracy.

Is there a need to keep a thread alive and interesting when it's getting long? Why not let it die a respectable death, and let whatever aspects of it remained interesting get fresh life as new threads?

Rover:
1) How long is considered to be too long for a thread?
--- End quote ---

when it's one post longer than your own personal interest in it.  ;)
-mouser (March 25, 2008, 02:42 PM)
--- End quote ---

Funny, but true.  Depending on the goal of the forum*, as long as more than two people are participating and enjoying the thread, carry on.  Two people can do the same thing in email without taking up our internet space, if only 1 person is talking it's called a blog.   :P

*If the goal is to build a knowledge base, anything over 5 pages is too long.  Very few people will venture into something over 100 posts, so the information will be unusable.

James Sterrett:


* It's a thread that consists of people complementing boosting the ego of Tinjaw.-tinjaw (March 25, 2008, 02:40 PM)
--- End quote ---

These do not exist.  Words cannot describe how awesome you are (ahem), so we never try.   ;)

jgpaiva:
Even though we are entering the gray area (where a forum starts discussing the inner works of the forum more than the interesting outside matters), i think this is a good point.

I've noticed this problem myself with the giant GridMove thread, that became so big that any information in it is pretty much useless now.

I think app was "right on the money" there:
When you compare the discussion on page 15 to page 1 and find they are totally unrelated.  :D
-app103 (March 25, 2008, 02:55 PM)
--- End quote ---

4 out of the 10 longest threads on DC are development-related (5 if you count the "General brainstorming for Note-taking software"). This makes me think these are the threads that tend to grow and grow and grow.
I think it's a shame that happens, because even though it eases the development, people just end up repeating stuff that was already said in previous posts (i recall a specific post about gridmove that i had to link to 5 times, because that question constantly popped up).

Still, it's interesting how all the threads have managed to respect app's "not too long" rule, after all those posts they keep on topic (at least most of the posts do).

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page