I know I'm not a moderator and shouldn't act like one, but I've recently come across a bunch of comments that were indicating a general misunderstanding of the "Popular Threads"-forum pretty clearly.
Now, I am pretty sure it's meant for threads asking questions in a similar fashion to polls. For example: "what's your favorite kind of pizza topping?" or "what's your favorite brand of cars?" - of course this needs to be applied to adventure-topics. As in: the thread asks for your favorite something.
People (and even a few moderators moving threads, if I remember correctly) seem to (start to) think it's meant for popular threads (like, threads with lots of response). Moving those threads to a different forum-area makes no sense in my opinion and just confuses readers (therefore coming close to "locking" the thread since interest - and participation - is drawn away from it) - all that shouldn't be done to "good" threads, whether they're popular or not.
So, any clear-ups? I know this doesn't exactly look like a very important issue, but it's been crossing my mind since I first read one of these misunderstandings and noticed they were apparently pretty spread out.
OR am I just being stupid here (and the forum-subtitle is very unclear in that case) and that area is (for whatever reason I can't see at the moment) in fact for threads with lots of interest and responses?
I know it's really not my area to meddle with, but:
frutti di mare (shrimp, tuna, shellfish, tomato sauce, cheese)
a Trabant, no doubt about it
And then, I always saw the forum as a place where we have threads that share general interest, as in threads that don't really die. Kind of a forum chat around a certain issue like music, women's hair, or so and so. Now the poem thread seemed to be popular, also there's no end to it most probably, so imo it really is the place for it.
I am just going to say that I am happy that this "Haiku maybe help?" silly thread has gone forever from gen gen. ^_^
Actually, I had been wondering why "offer your services" had been moved. It's not really a "popular" perennial answer-your-stuff thread, but part of the adventure design structure on these boards.
Imho.
As far as I understand, the current use of the Popular thread thread is to make popular threads become less popular, so people can cool down for a while. :=
Haiku Maybe Help has bounced back and forth from popular to Gen-Gen several times, as I recall. Same with the post your picture thread. I like Gilbert's definition- sort of a time out space when people go on posting frenzies.
Then again, for me two posts in a month is a posting frenzy.
Well, if people need cooling down, maybe we should talk to those people and not move the threads around to somewhere where they'll rust to death. It's no big deal, really, though. I just wanted to point out (and confirm) the shift of meaning I saw behind the forum.
Yeah, I get that part, and I see how the forum basically contains "overdone threads that most forum regulars really don't care about", but I still fail to see what "offer your services" is doing in there.
Quote from: DragonRose on Thu 25/10/2007 15:57:30
Haiku Maybe Help has bounced back and forth from popular to Gen-Gen several times, as I recall. Same with the post your picture thread. I like Gilbert's definition- sort of a time out space when people go on posting frenzies.
Then again, for me two posts in a month is a posting frenzy.
Dragon Rose, please, take a break from these forums... You've been posting so much in so many threads that you're frankly cluttering the place up... Maybe take a break for a couple of months, why not take up sewing! Don't make me move you to the Popular Threads section!
My question is, if you were really curious why the moderators were moving threads around then why didn't you pm a moderator instead of starting another General Discussion thread? ???
Read my original post again, prog. I'm not wondering why threads have been moved, I just wanted to ask about or point out that little misunderstanding that's been going round the entire community about the purpose of that specific forum-area, mainly because its name "Popular Threads" is linguistically misleading. Hell, I mainly find it somewhat amusing that people have been mixing up the purposes and actually posting/moving popular threads in that area, not popular-threads. :D
And why am I "starting another GD thread"? Do I do this a lot? I don't think so. Does this thread have a purpose? To me it has, but if nobody cares a whole lot about what's in there or not, so be it. There have been more pointless threads before.
It's a reasonable question.
What's the purpose of the Popular Threads forum?
Is it to put threads that have had a lot of replies there to get them out of the way in General Discussion?
Or is it to put commonly asked question threads there so that people can find them easily rather than asking them again?
Some threads would tick the box for both of these, but others (like the Haiku one or the I Love Mark Lovegrove one) are dubious.
To be honest I can't remember what the forum's original purpose was, but do we think it's working as it is now?
If it isn't broke, don't fix it.
It is fine the way it is, and i really like the threads there. Easy to find.
edit: we could put the Moving Thread in there too, so it doesn't disappear, but that would defeat the purpose of the moving thread. But just a suggestion.
I'm with Radiant on the question of why the "Offer Your Service" was moved there. It doesn't seem to make sense to me at all, since the "Recruit a Team" thread was left alone in the Chat forum?
I wasn't paying attention when it was first instituted but it always seemed to me to be the forum equivalent of the windows recycle bin that provided a way for moderators to dispose of annoying threads without provoking the wrath of the masses.
The popular threads forum is for popular threads. It's sort of a neverneverland for threads that have become big, to keep them from overwhelming the gen gen and to sort of take them out of the public eye so that they maybe stop being so prominent. It's also there to save threads from being lost forever in the big swamp of old gen gen posts. It's appropriate for the Haiku thread, and all those "list your favorites!" threads.
I don't know why the "offer your services" thread was moved there. I think it's even less noticable there, and will cause even more confusion. I would rather see it as a sticky in the gen gen forum, since this is the forum most people visit and that way it will most likely be seen.
I also think that maybe the post your pictures thread should be in the popular threads forum.
These are my opinions!
I vote for a "Show your kitties!" topic stickied in the popular thread forum. =3
Every community should have this.
Hehe, for a second I thought Gilbot said "tities" instead of "kitties". Maybe we should have both? ;D
Quote from: RickJ on Fri 26/10/2007 01:39:51
I'm with Radiant on the question of why the "Offer Your Service" was moved there. It doesn't seem to make sense to me at all, since the "Recruit a Team" thread was left alone in the Chat forum?
Quote from: Pesty on Fri 26/10/2007 03:44:37
I don't know why the "offer your services" thread was moved there. I think it's even less noticable there, and will cause even more confusion. I would rather see it as a sticky in the gen gen forum, since this is the forum most people visit and that way it will most likely be seen
So, since nobody has been able to explain this so far, can we get a mod to move that one back please?
I agree, I've moved Offer Your Services back to Adventure-related Chat.
I understood the Popular Threads forum to be for either questions that're asked often enough (what's your favourie game/AGS game/character, etc) that a single thread makes more sense, or for threads that get periodically bumped and added to over a length of time (like the Haiku one) - or in other words, have proved popular. I guess 'Offer your Services' could qualify under the first definition (as could 'Recruit a Team', of course).
It was moved, I'd imagine, on the back of the discussion about cleaning up RaT. Having both seemed a bit redundant, so one had to go - and instead of deleting it entirely and losing all the active offers, it was moved somewhere it would still be visible, but not visible enough to compete with RaT. That's my interpretation, anyway. The tone of the discussion (when I read it, at least) sounded like RaT should be the one to 'go', but what the heck.
Isn't the point of having both OYS and RAT that one is for members seeking a team, and the other is form teams seeking members? Supply and demand, basically.
Quote
It was moved, I'd imagine, on the back of the discussion about cleaning up RaT. Having both seemed a bit redundant, so one had to go - and instead of deleting it entirely and losing all the active offers, it was moved somewhere it would still be visible, but not visible enough to compete with RaT. That's my interpretation, anyway. The tone of the discussion (when I read it, at least) sounded like RaT should be the one to 'go', but what the heck.
I don't know that I stayed with that discussion to it's conclusion or if I am thinking about another related one; but what I remember is that we were talking about having a proper want ads kind of thing rather than forum threads. The idea was that old ads would be automatically deleted after some period of time.
I'd say just perodically start new OYS and RAT threads and lock the old ones. IMHO that's all thats needed to keep them a bit more tidy. A clever PHP person could probably even automate the process.
Radiant is right that they are complimentary to each other.
I think the Popular forum is a good idea... imagine if none of those threads had been moved there. The general and other fourms would be cluttered with with all of everybody's favourite polls and topics and new topics would sinks straight onto page 2 with barely 20 views. Best to stick all the popular ones in their own room and give new ones a chance to grow and shine and eventually become captain of the football team.