When we go back to Buck’s original announcement it states:
So two reasons are mentioned, I guess those that were judged the most important. There were apparently other reasons but (again apparently) they were not judged to be important enough to be mentioned.There are a few reasons why this policy is being introduced, but the primary one is to help the moderating staff patrol some of our largest threads - some of which now span hundreds of pages. You'll also find that it takes an increasingly longer amount of time to load a page as you move toward the back of a thread, so this new policy should help with some performance concerns.
To start with the last: performance issues. If these are indeed becoming a problem, I think it might be sufficient justification for a new regulation. But I also feel that the introduction of any new administrative regulation in this regard should bring clear benefits to the board or its administrator, and as little disruption of ongoing things as possible.
As things stand, I must say that I myself hardly noticed this increase of loading time in long threads, and from the wording in Buck’s first statement I thought I could deduce that this problem is a marginal one, or at least not so important that by itself it would justify the introduction of this new regulation. Though the second statement seems to upgrade the technical part of the reasons, the quotes are somewhat selective and the introduced limit at 1,500 posts arbitrary and not based on any concrete data. As someone else on that forum said:
If by itself it would be enough reason to introduce this rule, then I’d see little need for invoking other reasons (or only in an accessory way) and certainly not for relegating this reason to a secondary place. It would also be a purely technical matter, not worth of discussion, and certainly not of “much deliberation”.5,500 posts is nothing, the performance hit will be low and tolerable.
we have a thread in our board with 283,000++ posts, and it takes our servers 1-2 minutes to generate a page from that thread. all other pages take 0.2-0.5 seconds to generate.
So we come to what was mentioned originally as the primary reason: to help the moderating staff patrol some of our largest threads. I have several problems with this argument, and mainly I fail to see how this rule will actually lead to its purported effect.
First of all I fail to see how it makes life easier for the moderators to keep track of the number of posts in at least part of the threads, apart from their normal having a look at the contents of posts. It seems to me like adding to the workload. Only a little, but adding nonetheless.
I also fail to see how the length of a thread makes it difficult to police that thread. Was the Song Lyrics thread, now closed, so difficult to police? Yet it has 1,973 posts, well over the now introduced limit of 1,500 posts. Moreover, we’ll now see a nice collection of song lyrics slipping slowly into oblivion as a sad side effect, and similar things might happen to other “collection” threads in future (quotes, poetry,…).
The only way I see how the length of a thread could make things more difficult for moderators is by making it more difficult to load pages as mentioned in the secondary reason. But in that case this making it easier for mods is more of a side effect of making the board function better through a technical measure and hardly worth mention as a primary reason.
A post of Maharlika gave me the idea that people are confusing cause and effect and are targeting the effect rather than the cause: fast paced posting leads to long threads, and it’s also fast paced posting that might give troubles for moderators to follow up, as far as I understand the job (a job which I admittedly never did). But then fast paced posting needs to be targeted, not length of threads.
As far as for contextual information getting lost, I doubt that reading back more than 20 to 30 pages in some of the longer chit-chat threads will give a lot insight in ongoing conversations. So the length limit wouldn’t help a lot there. And even if older information would help, it would become buried as threads get closed, rather then conveniently being in the same thread, that’s still on the first page.
And concerning the spreading of chit chat over several threads:
a. This will not necessarily be a long term effect of limiting thread length, already some consolidating happens, and in the long term we might see a series of mini strongholds and citadels that follow one another rather than a spreading over several threads.
b. Even if it would happen, how would this help with improving pace, number and content of posts? Moreover spreading the same number of posts over more threads will mean more pages to load (100 posts in one “spam” thread: 7 pages, equally spread over 5 “spam threads”: 10 pages) and context will get spread over several threads, that doesn’t seem to make things easier on the moderators.
Thus so far noone has made a convincing argument how limiting thread length will help moderators do their jobs.
As far as I can see the two reasons for introducing a new rule given in Buck’s first post are fairly unconvincing, since the introduced rule will only have a limited effect if any on the problems quoted (loading of pages and easier moderating) or even a contrary effect in the case of easier moderating. The second post by Buck mainly upgrades the technical argument, but I can not really find a justification for a thread limit at 1,500 posts.
I also had a look at the threads concerned (I limited myself to SYM & Other Entertainment forums and those threads that saw activity in the last three months).
The Succeeder Stronghold (34,041) (closed)
The Heathen Citadel (20,359) (closed)
Person Above Your Game (3,540) (closed)
Join the MCOPCDAWD (2,794) (not closed yet)
Song Lyrics (1,973) (closed)
Five threads…
Was it really necessary to invent a new rule that concerns only five threads? Of which one moreover seems to be more of collateral damage (song lyrics) than a real target? Of which only two were closed immediately as a result of the introduction of this rule, while the other two where only closed very shortly after somebody posted in them? Couldn’t there have been a closing of certain threads under existent rules such as excessive spam or the technical matter of a thread becoming too difficult to load (for people posting there or for moderators following up)? Did those threads actually need closing?
Moreover I saw more than a dozen threads from different years in the past which were also well above this limit of 1,500. Apparently there was no call to close these threads then, because few of them were actually closed, and most on request, not on violations. What has changed? Apart from several server upgrades, I mean.
Other reasons were inferred (“there were a few reasons”), but not mentioned, so they seem to be judged less important then the already fairly weak reasons mentioned. So I can only imagine that curbing thread length might have even less effect on these. But since they are not mentioned we cannot know.
Other possible effects of this regulation have been mentioned in this thread (though I deem them all highly unlikely). But since they were not mentioned in either Buck’s or Xandax’s posts announcing this rule, we must presume they didn’t play a major role. It is, after all “merely an administrative change”.
So I was puzzled…
And then I got even more puzzled when rereading…
Buck Satan][b]After much deliberation[/b] wrote:Xandax][b]This is mearly an administrative change[/b] and not because the thread is in violation (necessarily) of the forum rules wrote:(my bold)
I’m happy to see that even minor matters are taken very seriously by Buck and the moderators, but it seems to me a bit incongruous that a mere administrative change requires much deliberation.
Moreover, for a mere administrative change, it seems to have sparked quite the little discussion. To some people here it obviously isn’t a mere administrative change. But if it isn’t, wouldn’t it have warranted a somewhat clearer explanation than “it will be easier for the moderating staff”, like how it will be easier for the moderating staff, maybe even a semblance of consultation of those affected concerning the introduction of a brand new rule for which there was no call in the past and which only affected two threads immediately? Two threads heavily frequented by a certain “clique”? Bah, coincidence! But a bit of public consultation, or even, discussion, between “much deliberation” and “merely an administrative change” would have done quite a bit to take away a nagging feeling in the back of my head. The existence of this thread might also be a fairly strong indicator that such a consultation/discussion might have been a good idea before implementing the rule.
(my information has a second post but it gets constantly deleted without me being sent a reason why - sorry-o)
