Flexible threads

One of the most common phenomena on online forums is threads going wildly off-topic. While this can often be a pain because people will click into a thread about X expecting a thread about X but getting a conversation about Y, the conversation about X having ended 10 pages ago, it is also often a natural thing and can be very interesting. I have said before that human conversation by nature has a tendency to meander and while enforcing an on-topic rule can often be useful it can also stifle potentially interesting discussion.

I was wondering how a system would work out wherebysomeone starts a thread on one topic, and as discussion goes off-topic, mods, instead of deleting or splitting the off-topic posts and asking people to remain on-topic, simply change the title of the thread. Conversation would simply be allowed to go whichever direction it happens to go and mods would change the title regularly.

I'm not saying it would work out better than the system we have now but I think it's an interesting idea.

I'm not at all keen on cutting out contributions from one thread and dumping them in another, unless the OP is pm'd first.

evercloserunion wrote:

One of the most common phenomena on online forums is threads going wildly off-topic. While this can often be a pain because people will click into a thread about X expecting a thread about X but getting a conversation about Y, the conversation about X having ended 10 pages ago, it is also often a natural thing and can be very interesting. I have said before that human conversation by nature has a tendency to meander and while enforcing an on-topic rule can often be useful it can also stifle potentially interesting discussion.

I was wondering how a system would work out wherebysomeone starts a thread on one topic, and as discussion goes off-topic, mods, instead of deleting or splitting the off-topic posts and asking people to remain on-topic, simply change the title of the thread. Conversation would simply be allowed to go whichever direction it happens to go and mods would change the title regularly.

I'm not saying it would work out better than the system we have now but I think it's an interesting idea.

Yeah ... we have had some discussion here before on it - Hermes proposed a "super thread" which would be a limited "view" of a conversation or thread which naturally meanders through different topics. The view would be of the topic only sought - for example, GOLD on the p.ie iseq thread could be one view or Central Banks ... Very difficult to program as it would parsing a natural language unless you could somehow use all the nested bits.

As threads develop here we tend to rename them now or add bits rather than produce new threads... We should I think have a policy of not being so stingy with new threads and let them be produced to a certain degree and then merge them as they reproduce what is already there. In the end, an entire set of threads could be merged into a single thread - maybe. I'm thinking that there is a proliferation of Gaza threads now and we should try to control some. Sometimes it's just necessary to let threads be produced though because readers can glance at them for the new news. But that idea is for a particular kind of forum too and I don't know really if this one should go that route.

It IS necessary to let both things happen - threads spring up and threads go off topic and meander ... they both can be split or merged later but you need a good eye for it because posters get pissed off if you move stuff around WITHOUT ASKING THEM or at least informing them that you are about to rename/relocate a thread. A simple msg in the thread should suffice but not always.

ECU, we do that here quite a bit - change the title as things go along. There was a tremendous ISEQ thread that changed title every day. It would be possible to do more of that, where it's relevant. The OP really has to take ownership of it though, I would suggest and it would be a great way for a poster to get his/her personality behind the thread. That said, not all threads are suited to such an approach, but where it works - great.

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cutting out contributions from one thread and dumping them in another

Ooh, that's harsh, Ronald Binge, but I see your point. Sending the OP a pm would be an idea where it's still viable - we'll add it to the mods guidelines (and don't be afraid to remind us!)

I spend quite a bit of time moving posts, but we try to do it only where necessary. Recently some climate change stuff wrangled its way into the weather thread which has a completely different tone and content and it was important to retain the integrity of each thread - and the sanity of those who post on and peruse both.

To be honest, it's a tedious job as far as I'm concerned and only worth doing when not to is more painful in terms of aesthetics, content and coherence. There are times when groups of posts could be shifted out of a thread and dumped in the Síbín, but once off-topic conversations don't last too long, they can add to the character of a thread.

What you do hint at is something we probably haven't considered here much, which is the notion of the ownershop of threads. What are your ideas on this?

EDIT - posted in wrong thread!