[felix]

@relentlessflame

The threaded model is excellent, however vB's implementation of it is horrible, almost unusable. People actually have no issue understanding threaded mode, what they have a problem is passing the lazy barier. Essentially for threaded mode to work you have to tell the system who you are replying to, so it means you actually have to use quote, multi-quote, quick reply and so on. You can't just post, not with how it's implemented in vB.

Originally Posted by Flower

I have never felt the effect of not being able to start a new topic in a subforum. I usually find all the subjects needed if I want to bring up a topic and can make a post thereon.

Nobody is saying you can't post on the topic in a manner that would be similar to starting a topic. It's all about what happens afterwards. The issue lies in a topic's lifespan and how it's messed up. I understand there is a split where essentially you have: (a) people who care for the topic going from A to B, the exchange of arguments and so on and then you have... (b) people who care for only the last word on the topic (or last page), and just shoot something out and go away. Mind you, there's nothing wrong with the second type.

Obviously if you look at it as just opening a prezent each time you go into a topic the current format of merging everything togheter is great! The generic topic format is also great in that respect. It's like with tweeter and blogging, put generic topic format togheter and you have this micro-topic format where everything just lasts a page or two at most, and once the new micro-topic comes out that's the end of it's lifecycle; unless someone necro's it from 10 pages back later which is (most likely) not gonna work since everyone will be focused on the new micro-topic.

This is all great and all but... micro topics have an extremely short lifespan, are undiscovarable, and are only accessible for a short time.

They also have severe issues when it comes to propagation. For example you can have a topic that interests a lot of people, but none of those people frequent the thread where the topic happens every five minutes so it goes something like one post on it every page or second page, which means that topic can not happen. And this may sound like it's an extreme situation, but just think of any topic that involves a lot of arguments and has a lot of angles to it. That takes a lot of writing, writing takes a lot of time, so in a environment like we have now where it's "bury other topics, or get buried" proper civilized topics like that just can't exist. The only topics of that kind (where it's about exchange of arguments more then throwing your own random thoughts out one-time) that can beat the system at it's own game, are flame wars (since they follow suficiently mindless posting patterns and in sufficient quantity). Hence all your arguments now of "well, it's protecting against the big bad evils" and the like.

This whole micro-topic trend seems to be IMHO a more recent trend that has come, not with the death of irc (it's far far from dead) but lets say a very severe decline in it's use and the use of similar system. I think part of it can be attributed to the more widespread use and popularity of IM systems, and comment system. But anyway, essentially if you want spontenious discussion IRC does 10x times better, 10x times faster and with 10x less effort. Becasue people for various reason have stopped using it, along with other similar chat systems, we now have this stupid influx of people treating "forums" as a "chat system". Let's face it, talking about things that expire in less time then a day and have a very temporary aspect to them, may not be necesarly "personal" but it's pretty much just chat, not discussion, nor debate. And that's not what forums are for. Threads are not suppose to act as chat channel logs, they are suppose to be persistent debate, discussion you COULD NOT HAVE in a simply conversation environment like IRC channels. Things that do not require persistent storage are a waste of space and detract for base principle.

Moving on...

I keep reading a lot of purely defensive (especially on a personal level) of the moderators. I mean serious are you all telling me we're all wrong here, because we're all being big meanies and hurting their feelings. What is this, babysitting?

You want to defend their position then just answer the challenges I've mentioned in the previous pages. I've even given the answer to them myself, so all you have to do is prove to me how it does it better. They're linked straight into the main points so it's very simple and objective way of proving they are right and I am totally wrong and this is not a problem. Going by the silence and how everyone is ignoring them however I can only assume you can not face them, and hence this is valid problem and I have every right to explain whichever way I feel is correct. Yeah sure I might be completely off in my assesment of what is wrong, but staying silent isn't going to solve anything now is it. And remember, just because you have no issue with the system, with your posting patterns and your expectations, doesn't mean me and others feel the same way or have to think and post like you. Especially when none of us are actually trying to achive anything particularly wrong or that doesn't conform to high level ideals of the site (ie. "good quality discussion / debate on anime topics").

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I would prefer not to go into a dicussion where I have to take a solution-searching approuch. Why? because whenever I do it on this forum I'm met with brick walls, that's why. Pounding them with their mistakes, shortcommings and the like seems to be the only one that actually achives some level of understanding. But since some of you are offended by the approuch, well, I guess why not...

Essentially a "topic" or "dicussion topic" (most certainly not necesarly a thread) has to have several main attributes that need to be guaranteed for it go anywhere.

• visibility
• linking
• discovarability
• accessability
• relavance

Visibility, a topic is visible to for a suficient amount of time for it to take root; complex topics take time, not all topics can do with a 1-line response chain, if a topic isn't provided enough time it will simply die by virtue that nobody who was in a position to answer or contribute to it had enough time to see it, enough to think about it, or enough time to talk about it. Different topics require different levels of visibility. Longterm topics obviously require more visibility then others, because discussion may only happen in certain intervals and there's only so much to say with out requiring something like story preogression for the discussion to go on further. Shorterm topics (such as say simple events in the episode) can do with simply spontatnous response polling and so can work just fine with very minimal amounts of visibility. There is no such thing as a pre-ordained debate/discussion. A topic has to evolve from being just a subject to being a debate on it's own so if it's not given enough space then it's just gonna die.

The current thread format only provides visiblity at the level of extremely shorterm topics. In the air date of the episode and shortly after even topics that might fit inbetween have some issue with this. Worse still topics choke themselvs. Essentially anything that is worthwhile topic will clash heads and choke each other. The entire format works on the basis that there's always "only one thing that needs visibility" which obviously wrong, as proven by the original system. You'll typically have at least two strong points of interest. If you don't then failing is in having a forum for the series to begin with.

Linking (or convergence) comes into play once the topic has gotten past it's visibility problem. Essentially any subject is gonna be discussed from various angles. What's important is that all those angles converge back on the subject (ie. there's a certain correlation between the points brouth up) and don't diverge away from it and each other; it's not necesarly just being on-topic per se, but rather talking about things that matter. Just sprinking opinions on a topic isn't going to go anywhere, in fact it's likely to take it into the whole ad nauseam problem—since that's essentially what it is when it happens, talking about opinions with out talking about the topic. That's why a generic thread can't really achive linking. Essentially by definition if you're generic then you're objectiveless, hence there's nothing to converge to. The only reason it doesn't go into ad nauseam is because there's no guidline, it's essentially random so it can only go nowhere.

All the threads in series forums are generic. You're only chance of requesting thread of a debate/discussion is (outside extreme circumstances) if you make it generic as well. So basically, linking... nonexistent. This makes all the discussion there extremely dull and flat, as well as one dimentional—since really you're not gonna hear different angles on the same issue, it's just gonna be treated as a seperate micro-topic with no relation to the previous.

Discoverability is basically the attribute by which the general forum rule of "everyone has only one topic" is based on. The thing about discoverability is that it's largely based on two things, the title and the initial post. So for example, let's take the news thread and a piece of news. Generic threads like a news thread are discovarable in the sense that you can find them, but they really have no discovery value, since they are catch-all. It depends on what you're searching but generally, the more exact the subject is the more discovarable it is, the less specific it is the less relavant discovery is (beyond simpy a maintanence aspect; which is not in question). So basically you want threads to be as specific as they can with out hurting the discussion by being too specific to allow for good level of discovery; so an important piece of news for example being in it's own thread is a good balance of that. If it was more specific and fine grane then the discussion the discussion would go nowhere. Discovery kind of solves itself in an organic environement, it goes something like this: you search for a topic, you don't find it, you create it. Because you've created it based on the act of discovery chances are high you've got the ideal topic.

Let's look at series forums; remember they're created because "there's a lot of dicussion potential". First off, what's the dicoverability of the topics in general, I'll give them a good, bad or not-applicable:

• Well episode threads are about.... uh episode, or is it just about rating? (Bad discoverability)
• General could be about god damn anything. (Bad discoverability)
• The typical Info thread is pretty clear and easy to find. (Good discoverability)
• Image threads is just an excuse for galleries (not-applicable)
• Avatar threads are more of a mechanism (not-applicable)
• Merchandise, easy to find, does exactly what it says (Good discoverability)
• Speculation thread (Bad discoverability)
• Spoiler thread, it's chronological so it does what it intends (Good discoverability)
• Q/A is a mechanism (not-applicable)
• Single-Manga-thread or Single-Anime-thread generally follow the "progression of the story" and usually stand to mean there's nothing else so, (Good discoverability)

Okey so considering the main topics, it's pretty awful since it's all ambigous to it's purpose. You then have to look at emerging topics. The entire system encourages they be stuck in Episode/General pretty much or Speculation I suppose. Now what are the chances you'll discover them there unless you're following it all by the minute? pretty non-existent chances.

Accessability. A topic has to be easy to read from start to end. The requirement is basically: anyone who has discovered the topic can easily view it's history (ie. points) in a reasonably clear fashion—obviously the quality of the posters influences it a lot but still. The reason why accesability is important is because when a topic has accesability the points brouth up (a) are easy to grasp (b) don't get repeated (c) have a nice progression, among other benefits. When you don't have an accessible topic you get however (a) a lot of topic cycling and recycling, proportionate to the topics complexity (b) a lot of topic stagnation, essentially you're not gonna see the topic go nowhere since only the real popular points is going to be accessible to the majority and hence those points will just get repeated over and over, causing the topic to go nowhere (c) discontinuity, basically if a topic goes from point A, B, C, it would make sense that you should also just have A, C but if the topic is not accessible you're always just gonna have (at best) a connection between the previous point and the current point (so B, C) which is not healthy to the discussion, since this easily leads to the topic derailing itself as it starts to break up over time. Basically when you don't have accessability topics just rust and decay away. the less accessible a topic, the more likely it is to turn into just a flamewar as well. Accessiblity is also heavily tied into a topic being identifieable by members.

Does the current system gurantee accessability? Well when I reply to someone do you think I have any damn clue what the point before was, to which he is inferring or replying to? Nope. Can I find the initial point or identify the debate in some way for reference? Nope. So it would seem they fail the requirement.

Relavance. Every legitimate topic needs to achive a certain level of guranteed relavance over time. This is not say the topic has to stay relavant, but rather that a topic has to be inherently persistent and relavant, essentially one could say "future proof". This is very important in the long term for a topic's lifecycle. Typical topics with focused subjects almost never have an issue with this. Having a very concicise subject helps a lot basically. So say a topic on film cameras, it's still relvant as inference to the past in the present day where we are basically more or less all digital with the exception of niche cases. On the other hand generic catch-all topics are extremely hard to create and satisfy this requirement. The simplest example are timed based threads. So for example a thread based on an event that happens from a certain date and ends. What is there to discuss after the fact? It's pretty irrelavant. Relavance in a thread fuels good discussion and a thread is required to keep relevant to keep the discussion healthy. When a thread becomes irrelvant it has essentially forcefully reached the end of it's lifecycle and preferably threads like this or threads that easily reach this point should be avoided.

In the series forums you have plenty of threads with low relavance. For example, all the substritue-sytem threads: Q/A, Avy/Sig, Image threads are all barely relavant since the time of their creation. You then have threads like speculation threads or spoiler threads, which have a very finite lifecycle. The aren't so much of an issue. There is demand and there's no alternative solution, yet. And then you have the Episode threads. These things have a lifecycle of 1 week. And you might say well people can still post if their slowpokes, but that has no bearing on the threads relvance. IT's still 1 week since after 1 week you get a new episode and discussion in the previous weeks episode becomes thus inherently irrelavant. The minimum relavance for any thread should be at least the show's running time. So inherantly this also means if you have a short show (1 cour, 13 weeks) you want more condensed topics (so that there's more convergence and topics keep relavant), if you have a longer show (52 episodes) then you want more topics with more precise objectives to allow for aspects of the show to evolve and keep the relevance. It's not just about length, a drama requires a separate approuch then a romance, a romance requires a separate apporuch then a sci-fi, etc. The current way completely ignores this, and just treats everything the same.

Additionally, you can't force relavance. Something won't become relavant just if you say copy/paste it from another part of the forum where it might have seemed to work. Ideally, you achive the balance by manipulating what people already express they want. So if they say talk about certain romance angles, then it's a good time to split it off, thus creating a already self sustaining discusson and also guranteeing the discussion where you take it from keeps relavant as well by not gettting sidetracked.

So, episode threads.... utterly irrevalant, no value longterm (no the poll hardly helps). What about general thread? Well for example series threads keep relvant by following a series progress (as I keep babling over and over), unfortunately that purpose is taken from them when they are moved into series forums. They are turned from a progres thread to simply a mechanism, a catch-all, something like Q/A, Images, Ava/Sig and the like. As such it becomes irrelavant, with people being redirected to the fancier but flawed design of episode threads. It's still probably got more longterm value then anything else in the series forums but because it's relavance is so low it's value inherantly low as well, at least by comparison to say a series thread for a non-forum series.

So, unless there's some hybrid solution like threading, only one that's actually usable/viable, the only way to gurantee the basic requirements for a healthy topic is to have specialized threads for all but micro-topics. And this is required not just for the longterm lifecycle for the topic in question, but also for the shorterm.

From my POV, a moderator does NOT need to: read the discussion, understand the discussion, agree with the discussion, know the material, "protect" any one side, or make it so everything is rainbows and unicorns. All they need to do is make sure each thread is guranteed those basic requirements; and it should be top priority. Yeah there are nuances to it, but even those can be treated in subtle way that don't realy affect topics themselvs in a negative way. For example? flame wars, you can just implement a "Sink" feature like they have on Vanilla forums (ie. new replies don't bump topics), or if it's just a issue of two posters posting too much and diluting the topic then just implement an Slow mode by overwriting the time between posts or something so you can only post every 6 hours. Locks or rules or making example of posters is not necesary and it's just favoring certain angles to topics over others which is unhealthy to a discussion/debate. It's also pretty lazy moderating; lazy in the sense that it's treating the symtoms not the actual problem.