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How Many Pages into A Forum Topic Thread Do You Read


BobDVA

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I read the title, make quick assumptions and fill in the blanks, and go immediately to posting.

 

 

 

 

 

Kidding

I adopted an agenda so I don't have to really know whats being discussed. I just address one superficial point in the most recent post and then deliver my rant about the QB or OL or Russ Brandon. Saves a lot of time.

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I adopted an agenda so I don't have to really know whats being discussed. I just address one superficial point in the most recent post and then deliver my rant about the QB or OL or Russ Brandon. Saves a lot of time.

 

 

Haha. I like it.

 

In all seriousness it's very difficult to focus on work today with all the incredible news and recent Bills win.

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Lazy thread starters who refuse to peruse the board to see if there is an existing topic that they want to discuss are plainly inconsiderate.

I understand your point. Honestly I do. Nobody wants a whole bunch of recent threads on the same topic especially very recent topics.

 

There is another point to be made though too. A lot of people visit a forum to chat and take part in a conversation. If a thread is many pages long and you force them to always stay on that same thread then it is a major de-motivation for additional talk to occur. Because if I come visit this forum and I haven't been here in a week, I am certainly not going to feel like reading 20 pages of content before I can voice my opinion on a topic. It could take all the time I have available just to read the previous posts. Heck, sometimes I might not even finish reading the previous posts. I don't think people should be expected to have to do that. It's just not practical. Not everyone has that much time on their hands to come here.

 

And then there are situations where someone might want an up-to-date conversation to be started because some situation has changed. I think that is a reasonable reason to start a new thread. Nobody really wants to have every thread be 50 pages long do they? The site would suck.

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I understand your point. Honestly I do. Nobody wants a whole bunch of recent threads on the same topic especially very recent topics.

 

There is another point to be made though too. A lot of people visit a forum to chat and take part in a conversation. If a thread is many pages long and you force them to always stay on that same thread then it is a major de-motivation for additional talk to occur. Because if I come visit this forum and I haven't been here in a week, I am certainly not going to feel like reading 20 pages of content before I can voice my opinion on a topic. It could take all the time I have available just to read the previous posts. Heck, sometimes I might not even finish reading the previous posts. I don't think people should be expected to have to do that. It's just not practical. Not everyone has that much time on their hands to come here.

 

And then there are situations where someone might want an up-to-date conversation to be started because some situation has changed. I think that is a reasonable reason to start a new thread. Nobody really wants to have every thread be 50 pages long do they? The site would suck.

Just go to the end of the thread and read what is relevant today, very recent topic about the boards performance issues if the guys that finance and maintain this for us are asking us not to start threads that currently exist it's only fair that we do that. It's a great day in Bills history, but how many new ownership threads have been started just today!!!!
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I understand your point. Honestly I do. Nobody wants a whole bunch of recent threads on the same topic especially very recent topics.

 

There is another point to be made though too. A lot of people visit a forum to chat and take part in a conversation. If a thread is many pages long and you force them to always stay on that same thread then it is a major de-motivation for additional talk to occur. Because if I come visit this forum and I haven't been here in a week, I am certainly not going to feel like reading 20 pages of content before I can voice my opinion on a topic. It could take all the time I have available just to read the previous posts. Heck, sometimes I might not even finish reading the previous posts. I don't think people should be expected to have to do that. It's just not practical. Not everyone has that much time on their hands to come here.

 

And then there are situations where someone might want an up-to-date conversation to be started because some situation has changed. I think that is a reasonable reason to start a new thread. Nobody really wants to have every thread be 50 pages long do they? The site would suck.

 

Point well taken as I understand there is a balance that should be struck. However, there are far too many instances where there is a blatant disregard of accepted forum protocol and practices.

Edited by 26CornerBlitz
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After much consideration and banging my head off the wall this afternoon.... Forget everything I said previously... Just delete the damn duplicate threads. There are way too friggin many of them. I feel like I am losing my sanity....How many "The Team is Sold" "The Team is Staying" threads can you have.

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I agree that there are too many duplicate threads. My point is that once a thread reaches a certain point, 10, even 15 pages, it is time to restart and a new thread should be allowed.

 

I tend to agree. Not sure what the exact # cutoff should be, but if a topic already has 300 or so replies I'd usually rather not wade through all that.

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I generally read a page or two and then I go to the last page to see how it ends. Kind of like the way my wife reads a book.

Usually the topic changes a few pages in so you have to figure out where and how that happened.

Sometimes two or three people are on a roll, and new inputs from somebody else will be ignored.

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In the "old" days of 8-10 years ago, I felt like there was a lot more leeway given to posters with respect to creating new threads. I actually liked this a lot, because other forums that I used to frequent (NYYFans, anyone?) turned into 3 or 4 stream-of-consciousness megathreads. It was always a struggle to get news and gauge reaction to it, because you'd end up starting at the end of the thread, and then go back 5-6 pages until you found the first post that broke a particular news story.

 

I can't tell you how much I hate doing that - you end up reading a bunch of comments that 'spoil' the original post you're looking for and it's extremely disincentivizing to do. I'd much rather click on a new thread entitled "Trump drops out of the bidding" instead of needing to click on the "Sale of the team" thread, and then sort through all the irrelevant posts that aren't related to Trump, and then find the post about Trump dropping his bid, if it even exists yet.

 

If there are two clearly duplicate threads? Sure, close/merge the dupes. But, threads still need to have granularity to them if you want to encourage discussion... otherwise yeah, no one is going to bother clicking through mega threads to find the bits and pieces of conversations they'd like to read and contribute to.

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Personally, If I really like the topic, I can make it about ten pages.

I'd say about 5 pages tops.

 

Second Questions, how many post into a topic do you think it is on average before 28CorneBlitz points out that this topic is already being discussed?

:lol:

 

I guess it depends on how busy he/she is searching the net for new things to post. I'll say 1.5. :D

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