Unwieldy threads.

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22/10/2007, 6:26 PM
tricky_colour

Unwieldy threads.

A large number of threads have been becomin increasingly unwieldy I believe
due to a misguided policy of bunging all threads which may contain a particular noun or sequence on nouns, into the same thread.

Thus the tread becomes increaseing unwieldy due to their size and complexity, making them very difficult to read and navigate.
It become even worse as a point raised inevitably drifts off topic in a multitude of ways.
Eventually a thread becomes a 'mini-forum' but without the facilities which a forum normally provides to manage posts.

This problem does not occur in forums which are not 'managed' in that way.
22/10/2007, 6:39 PM
John83

Examples please.
22/10/2007, 7:37 PM
dahamsta

He's probably referring to what happened in the Ireland forum the other day. Ordinarily it wouldn't happen to that level, but when you've got a bunch of retards incapable of checking the thread list before posting their whiney little bitches, someone is going to wade into the forum and chuck the lot into one thread, and pick up of some false positives into the bargain. The problem is with the aforementioned retards, not the mods.

adam
22/10/2007, 9:59 PM
DmanDmythDledge

I don't that's what he's referring to. Any thread started about Kevin Doyle gets merged with the "Kevin Doyle Thread" and now has over 500 posts. Similar with Ian Harte, Robbie Keane and a few others. Also the same with post match threads that are slightly unrelated, eg one about the performance, one about interviews. Very annoying if you've read one but not the other then when they are merged everything gets marked as unread again and mixed around with 3 or 4 previous threads.
22/10/2007, 10:17 PM
Dodge

Quote:

Originally Posted by DmanDmythDledge

I don't that's what he's referring to. Any thread started about Kevin Doyle gets merged with the "Kevin Doyle Thread" and now has over 500 posts. Similar with Ian Harte, Robbie Keane and a few others. Also the same with post match threads that are slightly unrelated, eg one about the performance, one about interviews. Very annoying if you've read one but not the other then when they are merged everything gets marked as unread again and mixed around with 3 or 4 previous threads.

Plastic Paddy implemented it and I think he's bang on in fairness. Latest news is always at the end, and there's even a "go to first unread" button. Farr too many "Robbie Keane" threads started up and in 5 seperate threads, the same 5 people were arguing. Whats the point in that?
22/10/2007, 10:24 PM
DmanDmythDledge

Relating to the post match threads, do you not think it's a bit much when it ends up that there's 4 or 5 pages marked unread when most of them have been read by one already?
22/10/2007, 10:27 PM
Dodge

Quote:

Originally Posted by DmanDmythDledge

Relating to the post match threads, do you not think it's a bit much when it ends up that there's 4 or 5 pages marked unread when most of them have been read by one already?

Nope. If people post in the already established thread there's no problem, but some people want to start their own threads for ego reasons. On other site I run, we just delete those threads
23/10/2007, 12:53 AM
tricky_colour

Quote:

Originally Posted by DmanDmythDledge

I don't that's what he's referring to. Any thread started about Kevin Doyle gets merged with the "Kevin Doyle Thread" and now has over 500 posts. Similar with Ian Harte, Robbie Keane and a few others. Also the same with post match threads that are slightly unrelated, eg one about the performance, one about interviews. Very annoying if you've read one but not the other then when they are merged everything gets marked as unread again and mixed around with 3 or 4 previous threads.

Spot on it was nothing to do with what happen in the Ireland forum it is a general comment. One a tread goes over a few pages it becomes a bit of a mess. I find a lot of the longer threads quiet unreadable, there seems to no logical starting point for a start.
The last read post thing only works if you are logged in. When some refers
to some a previos poster said it may not be on that page. It might be on
any of the previous 39 pages!! New points become mixed in with old ones and it ends up unreadable.
And of course it will become progressively worse, The Kevin Doyle thread will become one humongous monster
by the time he retires in 10 or so years time with a 400 page thread behind him. I have seen threads in other forums
with well over 1000 posts in them, which are split into the helpfully named
"part 1", "part 2" etc..

I have even considered entitling a thread "Kevin Doyle and Robbie Keane" to highlight the problem :D
23/10/2007, 1:15 AM
tricky_colour

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dodge

Nope. If people post in the already established thread there's no problem, but some people want to start their own threads for ego reasons. On other site I run, we just delete those threads

I doubt very much it is to do with ego reasons, more likely because they want to be able to read any responses to the point they raised with out having to wade through hundreds of irrelevant posts to find them.
Often in big long threads especially at busy times it is not possible to determine who a poster is responding to unless he quotes it. If that person was in turn responding to someone else it becomes virtually impossible to keep track of who was saying what. 'Tidying thing up', whilst intending to be helpful actually creates more problems than it resolves.

A similar thing occurs with 'pre-matched' threads which are locked after a certain time. A point raised pre-match will still be something you might want to reply to after the match when the thread has been locked - but of course you cannot. And of course it is a complete mess anyway as dozens of seperate points will have been raised, only loosly connected.
23/10/2007, 5:56 AM
Dodge

Loosely connected around the the match? As above, what happens is the same people argue on different threads. I was initially against it, but PP was right 100% right. If you want to directly reply to a point. wuote it. If you want to contribute to the general disucussion, don't.

Love the way you deem some posts irrelevant on the topic. Why's that?
23/10/2007, 5:32 PM
tricky_colour

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dodge

Loosely connected around the the match? As above, what happens is the same people argue on different threads. I was initially against it, but PP was right 100% right. If you want to directly reply to a point. wuote it. If you want to contribute to the general disucussion, don't.

Love the way you deem some posts irrelevant on the topic. Why's that?

Can't understand what you are talking about.
You point about people argueing seems to be irrelevant, can you explain it's relevance?

You seem to have ignored everything I said. How can you quote from a locked thread?

I meant irrelevant to the point you are making, there may be scores of points raised during a match, you may only be interested in one of them, say for example the penalty. But you have to wade through 20 irrelevant pages of posts to find it.

So your conclusion that "PP was right" appears to be without any supporting evidence whatsoever.
24/10/2007, 9:40 AM
Dodge

Quote:

Originally Posted by tricky_colour

Can't understand what you are talking about.
You point about people argueing seems to be irrelevant, can you explain it's relevance?

You seem to have ignored everything I said. How can you quote from a locked thread?

I meant irrelevant to the point you are making, there may be scores of points raised during a match, you may only be interested in one of them, say for example the penalty. But you have to wade through 20 irrelevant pages of posts to find it.

So your conclusion that "PP was right" appears to be without any supporting evidence whatsoever.

I honestly couldn't understand a word of that. I think you're moaning so I'll explain it for you.

1) The purpose of the "single thread for single players" idea is to keep track of relevent disucussion. It saves numerous posts pointing out "we discussed this 2 weeks ago" and also saves the same poster from posting the same post in two threads. It does happen, and don't think it doesn't.

2) The purpose of the aftermatch thread is to keep all posts on one game on one topic. See above for similar reasons

If you're not interested in discussing the match. Fine, don't bother reading it. If you're only interested in askinging about one incident, tough.

Well done to eirebhoy and gustavo (and PP before them) for keeping by far the worst forum in here running so well.
25/10/2007, 3:00 AM
tricky_colour

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dodge

I honestly couldn't understand a word of that. I think you're moaning so I'll explain it for you.

1) The purpose of the "single thread for single players" idea is to keep track of relevent disucussion. It saves numerous posts pointing out "we discussed this 2 weeks ago" and also saves the same poster from posting the same post in two threads. It does happen, and don't think it doesn't.

2) The purpose of the aftermatch thread is to keep all posts on one game on one topic. See above for similar reasons

If you're not interested in discussing the match. Fine, don't bother reading it. If you're only interested in askinging about one incident, tough.

Well done to eirebhoy and gustavo (and PP before them) for keeping by far the worst forum in here running so well.

Regarding 1. All it does is bung the posts into one big thread and they are then 'lost'. For example I did a search on "Robbie Keane", among the results were "Robbie Keane on the Late Late Show", now that's useful, it tell me something. However "The Robbie Keane Thread", with over 1000 posts in it tells me nothing really, a pile of useful information has been lost.

Had the 'Late Late show; thread been bunged into 'The Robbie Keane thread', well you can see the problem, it will become mixed up with other issues surrounding Robbie Keane and just become a bit of an unnavigable mess really.

Also "we discussed this 2 weeks ago", people attitude to issues change over time they are not static, and anyway people won't look back over 1000 post to see if it has been discussed before, however they might notice a thread which had that matter in the title, and post in there if appropiate.

Whilst people might post the same thing in two different thread equally they might post it twice in the same thread, so nothing gained there.

I don't have too much problem with a match thread however I don't see the value in locking it after the match. Some people may still wish to reply to points raised in the thread at a later time for various reasons.

During a match loads of incidents are discussed and become hard to follow, it would be easier if such incidents were grouped in a single thread.
Is is a big problem is something is discussed twice? If you are short on disk space I will buy you a 250 giga byte drive for Xmas. It should take you a while to fill that up! I really cannot see any valid reason for how some things are managed.

"If you're only interested in asking about one incident, tough." Fair enough,
you can do things how you like, however I find it difficult to see what you gain from it, because as far as I can see the answer is absolutely nothing, I really struggle to see any gain for the site in anyway whatsoever, and nothing that has been said on the matter so far changes that.

I had thought there might be some sort of commercial value in doing things as you do them but I certainty don't see it, quite the opposite.

Anyway it's not my site so you can do as you please :ball:
25/10/2007, 3:52 AM
Student Mullet

Sometimes if there's a bit of news it can be handy to have a new thread so you can see the headline.
25/10/2007, 2:08 PM
eirebhoy

There's a "New Irish Manager" thread in the Ireland forum. I've no problem with the seperate Troussier, Brady and O'Leary threads, as long as they stay on topic. I can't remember what the topic was but I had to merge a seperate thread in with the "New Manager" thread because they had started to talk about the pros and cons of every manager. Basically we had 2 threads for the one discussion.

Today I moved this post from the O'Leary thread into the more relevant thread:
http://foot.ie/showpost.php?p=800497&postcount=822

It's a fair post but he wasn't replying to anyone in particular and it had nothing to do with O'Leary. If I left that post in the O'Leary thread we'd have people replying to him and again we'd have 2 threads on the one thing.

On Wednesday night they started discussing Stan's sacking in the "New Manager" thread. I pretty much had to move 3 pages of discussion on it into the relevant thread that was there all along.

I just wish people could keep things on topic.

btw, I don't know what I'd do without the "Go to first new post" function.
25/10/2007, 2:23 PM
eirebhoy

Quote:

Originally Posted by tricky_colour

I don't have too much problem with a match thread however I don't see the value in locking it after the match. Some people may still wish to reply to points raised in the thread at a later time for various reasons.

Copy their post and quote it in the post match thread...

I'm a member of a Celtic forum that keeps things grouped similar to this. They have a pre-match thread with 5-10 pages of posts. A match thread with up to 30 pages and a post match thread with sometimes over 30 pages. It works superbly well.
25/10/2007, 5:40 PM
tricky_colour

Quote:

Originally Posted by eirebhoy

Copy their post and quote it in the post match thread...

I'm a member of a Celtic forum that keeps things grouped similar to this. They have a pre-match thread with 5-10 pages of posts. A match thread with up to 30 pages and a post match thread with sometimes over 30 pages. It works superbly well.

Match threads are OK but in general big threads tend to split up into several mini threads which then become intermingled and hard to follow as the forums do not have a tree structure.
These threads might look neeat and tidy from the outside but from the inside it is a different case altogeather.
25/10/2007, 5:46 PM
tricky_colour

Quote:

Originally Posted by eirebhoy

I just wish people could keep things on topic.

People will never keep on topic, people tend to compare one thing to another and then you have a new topiic.
25/10/2007, 6:53 PM
eirebhoy

Quote:

Originally Posted by tricky_colour

People will never keep on topic, people tend to compare one thing to another and then you have a new topiic.

Any examples? All recent threads in the Ireland forum seem to be on topic to me.
26/10/2007, 3:39 AM
tricky_colour

Quote:

Originally Posted by eirebhoy

Any examples? All recent threads in the Ireland forum seem to be on topic to me.

The ones you wish people could keep things on topic in I would imagine.

I can't say I have been reading a lot of threads of late. When I see a thread with say 48 pages of posts in it I just think sod it, I can't be bothered, I am not going to read it from the start so the alternative is to start from the end and work back to some sort of logical starting point, I don't find that very appealing either so I just don't bother.

These are the last two posts in the 48 page "NI Boss targets Darren Gibson" thread.

"Was refering to the red and white "Northern Ireland flag"

The st. Patircks cross, even if you put the 6 pointed star and red hand in the middle, would be a lot better. It would look a lot like the Florida state flag. Ian and Martin might even be able to wangle a free week in Disneyland out of it!"

So we start off off topic with st. Patircks cross, and end up in Disneyland. I could not have made up a better post to to make my point
if I wanted to!!

And the next:-

"Slightly off topic [just like the last post, mind you I believe the Setana cup is as least related to football] but I hope none of this affects the Setanta Cup which we all need to continue to develop."

So there you are, last two posts off topic, I am just not going to wade backwards through it. And I am certaintly not gong to read it from the start.

And last post in the Dunphy Thread.

"All that shows Sheff Wed more in a poor light than Paul Jewel.
I mean come on look at some of the crap he had to put up with there!"

So, as I said I just don't bother anymore it's too much trouble, I am not really intertested in reading stuff I am not really interested in, and I don't know if I am not interested in it untill I have read it. I have not looked at those big threads for ages. WellI might have looked at the end of them and thought
"not sure what this about", but basically I no longer bother.

Incidently I picked those threads at random, maybe I got (un)lucky, but I am not going to read anymore to find out if that was the case!!!
26/10/2007, 9:16 AM
eirebhoy

If you want to come on here every morning/evening and have 2 or 3 pages worth of threads then fair enough. This isn't one of those forums and there's a few of them out there if you prefer them.
26/10/2007, 11:05 AM
dahamsta

Just posting to concur with the mods in this thread. Forums that merge, like Foot.ie, have a higher signal to noise ration to forums that don't, and keeping it that way is a primary goal of Foot.ie. Yes, we could improve things by being a bit more careful about it, but the careless merges generally happen at times when the relevant forums are incredibly busy, such as after matches. Mistakes get made, in fact I'm probably the one that made them earlier this week, but I'm not bothered. It's not the end of the world.

adam