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Old 2013-08-05, 23:33   Link #38
relentlessflame
 
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Join Date: Dec 2003
Age: 41
Quote:
Originally Posted by Triple_R View Post
However, if somebody starts a new thread they're likely to put at least some real thought and consideration into it since that OP has to stand up well on its own, it's not just a glorified bumping of a thread.
This "optimism" does not reflect my experience on this site. Many threads that people create are poorly-defined, representing little more than a passing stray thought, and could often have been answered or addressed by doing a simple search either on the Forum or on any search engine. We still spend a fair bit of time culling such poor threads or merging them into existing ones (or eliminating them), even though the occurrences are reduced after years of enforcing the current policy. So if you think "most new threads are good!", it's partly because we've been actively working to keep it that way as much as possible. We still sometimes do allow some "poor" threads if we think or notice that other posters will manage or have managed to make something good out of it, but this is not the general behaviour.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Triple_R View Post
Yes, and there are reasons why most forums don't do things this way.
Because the sorts of discussions they host are different, and tend to be more time-based than subject-oriented.

The primary emphasis of discussion on this site is around anime series (and also manga, light novels, and related things). And in such cases we always want people to use the existing threads rather than create new ones. And you may think "well that should be obvious", but again you only have to look back to the early days of this forum to see countless duplicate threads about shows that already had a thread, and with very little distinction or reason for creating a new thread (not to mention horrible, non-descriptive topic titles). And then when people perform a search for said show, they're presented with a deluge of options rather than finding the one right place.

Because "one topic, one thread" is the general principle we want people to follow for the primary discussion topics, it makes the most sense to apply this everywhere on the site so that people get into the habit of searching first rather than just blindly creating new threads. And in the vast majority of cases, this works out very well. Consistency is important to encouraging certain patterns of behaviour and discouraging others.

Anime recommendations/suggestions are a particular case because they are more time-based, and in response to the specific requirements outlined by the requester at the point in time when they make the request. Replying to said requests a long time later doesn't make very much sense. So in that case, it makes sense to lock the old threads once the request has either a) been fulfilled, or b) has expired/exceeded its expected life span (because the criteria of the original request will no longer apply).

But even in the case of the Suggestions forum, it would be preferable for the submitter to perform a search first, since many of the requests are repetitive and patterned. This is why we also discussed before about creating a sticky thread for some of the most common genre requests, which will hopefully reduce the duplicates and show more value to the time of those providing suggestions.

Most of the discussion in the General Anime and General Chat forums are a mix between subject-based and time-oriented, so in practice there are some threads that naturally tend to die out over time (which is fine), and some that tend to get bumped again every once in a while (which is also fine). You get the odd goof who Google-searched something and then replies to a post from seven-years-back when it totally makes no sense, but that doesn't happen that frequently. Certainly, I don't think it happens frequently enough to warrant a change in the overall "one topic, one thread" policy.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Triple_R View Post
With anime shows, AS goes through a lifespan process of "Current Series, Older Series, Retired". I'm not sure why a similar process couldn't be used for threads.
This is not comparable, because even in those cases there remains one single open thread for the topic. It just moves from one section to another. For sub-forums it branches out into more threads, but then re-collapses in the end back to a single thread, to keep what little discussion remains into one place rather than having people create new threads about it. So even "retired" doesn't really mean what you're implying it would mean in this case (i.e. that a topic dies and is allowed to be reborn in a new thread). This is a pattern that we employ very rarely on the site, because a topic being locked generally means "don't create another one like it, because the first was locked for a reason". People who create a duplicate thread when the first was locked will often be banned for violating moderator guidelines. So, again, consistency is valuable here.


Anyway, at the end of the day, "one topic, one thread" is one of the features of this site that keeps it organized and makes it distinct from other anime-related discussion sites on the Internet. I don't see any reason to deviate from this design trait except in the specific cases where it doesn't apply (i.e. timely personal recommendation requests). Other sites can use their own organizational patterns, which will have their own benefits and drawbacks.
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