Styx: Policy change: "big tent" / "portmanteau" threads
In a tweak to our current practice, and partly in response to the discussion in the Styx relating to Epiphanies, henceforth we'll be discouraging broad, catch-all, "big tent" or "portmanteau" threads across all our forums.
General, "big tent" or "portmanteau" threads may have had the advantage of allowing space to explore around the edges of sub-topics without risking moving out of the "big tent", but have resulted in interesting discussions being lost in the big picture or some sub-topics dominating the discussion to the exclusion of others.
Some practical outcomes:
- We invite Shipmates to wind down posting on existing "big tent" threads. Don't be surprised to see more locked soon. Instead, start threads with a specific focus.
- Similarly, personal Hell calls are now going to have an expiry date to prevent them turning into "big tents". We're doing away with "permanent" threads with somebody's name attached.
- Any thread may naturally spawn tangents, and that's fine. But rather than allow them to turn a specific thread into a "big tent" thread, you can expect to see Hosts split tangents more frequently, and in some cases, split the tangent to a different forum.
- We invite anyone who wishes to continue with one of the specific topics previously raised on a legacy big tent thread to start a new, specific thread (you can of course include a reference back to a relevant post on the originating thread for clarity). If hosts don't think a new thread is in the right place, they'll move it accordingly.
(For the avoidance of doubt, moving and splitting threads don't in and of themselves imply a sanction).
These changes are part of an ongoing rethink. We haven't finished thinking, but we're keen to make some practical adjustments as of now, and allow some of the discussion that was cut short to resume in this adjusted environment. Have at it.
Eutychus, for the SoF admin team
General, "big tent" or "portmanteau" threads may have had the advantage of allowing space to explore around the edges of sub-topics without risking moving out of the "big tent", but have resulted in interesting discussions being lost in the big picture or some sub-topics dominating the discussion to the exclusion of others.
Some practical outcomes:
- We invite Shipmates to wind down posting on existing "big tent" threads. Don't be surprised to see more locked soon. Instead, start threads with a specific focus.
- Similarly, personal Hell calls are now going to have an expiry date to prevent them turning into "big tents". We're doing away with "permanent" threads with somebody's name attached.
- Any thread may naturally spawn tangents, and that's fine. But rather than allow them to turn a specific thread into a "big tent" thread, you can expect to see Hosts split tangents more frequently, and in some cases, split the tangent to a different forum.
- We invite anyone who wishes to continue with one of the specific topics previously raised on a legacy big tent thread to start a new, specific thread (you can of course include a reference back to a relevant post on the originating thread for clarity). If hosts don't think a new thread is in the right place, they'll move it accordingly.
(For the avoidance of doubt, moving and splitting threads don't in and of themselves imply a sanction).
These changes are part of an ongoing rethink. We haven't finished thinking, but we're keen to make some practical adjustments as of now, and allow some of the discussion that was cut short to resume in this adjusted environment. Have at it.
Eutychus, for the SoF admin team
Comments
Some of the big tent threads are, to say the least, confusing to Bears Of Very Little Brain...such as me.
When I started hosting Purgatory 20 years ago (yikes!) we'd have a dozen or so active threads on subjects like "was 'day' 24h long?", "how could X organ evolve? this disproves evolution", "why don't people carbon date fossils?" etc. Sometimes these threads would run for a few weeks and get hundreds of posts, sometimes they'd simply sink without anyone posting a reply, sometimes someone had asked an almost identical question two days before and the hosts would copy the OP and any replies onto the slightly older thread and close the new one. At the time we deleted old threads from Purgatory weekly, and so the 50 or more threads that hadn't been posted on for a couple of weeks got deleted (a small number went to Limbo if really worthwhile), which meant that the same question could often be discussed half a dozen times a year. When we created Dead Horses this particular subject was sent there, and in part because the lower rate of posts meant threads could hang around longer we found that a couple of these threads tended to gather a lot of posts and the tangents slowly spread out into the big tent "Creation and Evolution" thread that was moved back to Purgatory last year where there'd be a series of posts on the meaning of the word 'day', then either after a hiatus or running partially parallel a discussion on some aspect of how an organ evolved.
It's almost impossible to follow more than 2-3 separate discussion threads in that sort of 'big tent', which isn't necessarily a problem on a slow moving thread or on a thread which is following rapidly changing news events. But on a thread that's ticking over fairly steadily you can get problems where someone goes off-line for a couple of days and comes back to find that the particular subject they'd been discussing has been replaced by something else, or where a more heated aspect of the broader subject suddenly erupts on a thread where someone had been sharing some more personal stuff that deserves a more gentle discussion style.
So, we're going to try and encourage a return to the practice of long ago and have lots more threads with much narrower focus. With the much lower rate of posting hopefully it will be easier to see if there's already a suitable thread on the narrow subject people want to discuss to reduce the number of duplicate threads compared to 20 years ago. We'll find out.
Sure, there are cross-connections. There always are. The entwined topics can certainly be discussed separately and may benefit from that.
Am I correct in understanding that, in future, thread topics must be far more specific and narrow? If this extends to all forums, what about the country-specific threads in AS? Right now, in the UK thread, for instance, UK people post about all sorts that's going on in their lives, and non-UK people also sometimes join in. It's incredibly broad, but how do you have casual chat threads if the topic has to be specific?
Good question. There may be exceptions where it doesn't make much sense to split things out. Though the regional threads have also spawned other threads at times anyway (most obvious the chat suggests a meet, then that is organised on a dedicated thread). We'll think about that one a bit more.
I think Fineline has a good point about chat threads. Those threads, and the ever-popular TICTH
It's really the massive sprawly serious-discussion threads that aren't as functional as they could be, and absent a proper threaded interface, splitting them into small threads might be better.
There is a price to pay, though. At the moment, "all" the discussion about the current US President is corralled into one Hell thread and one Purg thread, so if you look at the thread index for Purg, you see a range of topics (right now, Police, racist statues, Covid-19, Trump, Biden, Autism, White privilege, etc., etc.)
@Barnabas62 suggested splitting the Trump thread into perhaps a double-handful of different threads. The next time Trump does something stupid, what are the odds that all the Trump threads will shoot up to the top of the Purg list, drowning out the other topics?
I suspect we'll have to let it run for a while and see what happens.
As for TICTH, it was relaunched in AS, IIRC, with the specific purpose of being able to sustain the odd tangent; I think we may have split off one that got rather long, but in general it's kept itself contained as a place for individual "rantlets", with provision for a modicum of support thrown in.
Both of these situations work for me; I'd be happy to hear any other views on the subject.
oh bugger. I always enjoy your posts.
Are you now able to be a bit more explicit about why it was closed a few days before the announcement, and not given a ‘winding down’ order and left to break into other, more specific threads elsewhere, as happened with the other big tent threads? It seems it was more singled out - is that to do with the vision of Epiphanies? As it is, I’m still feeling in the dark as to whether, for example, a thread on male suicide would belong in All Saints, Epiphanies or Purgatory, especially if the Epiphanies guidelines are not to change.
Thanks.
And, no the Amazon Grace thread isn't a generalised or 'big tent' thread, but an example of the sort of specific thread we're encouraging.
(If my understanding is developing in the right direction, I think I'm asking a recursive question and have answered myself.)
And I’m finding that they all sort of run together, in the sense that I lose track sometimes of what posts were in which threads—especially since I’m seeing the same thing discussed in more than one thread.
But maybe it’s just me.
It's not just you.
We could call it the Apocalypse board.
The US general election isn't till November, and covid will be with us well into next year at the very least!
The question for me is whether 6+ active threads on Trump are better than one Purgatory thread and one Hell thread. I know the idea is that the new threads are supposed to be more narrowly focused, but I’m seeing the same things talked on multiple Trump threads.
I can see how it’s helpful to spin off tangents that take on lives of their own. But I find myself wondering if the “big tent” threads on subjects like Trump or Brexit or COVID-19 keep the boards on the whole from getting cluttered and harder to follow.
When I think back over the years, some of the most memorable and interesting threads have been the big, long sprawling ones where conversation had meandered about around a lot of tangents. If the policy had been to break them up, then the Ship would have been poorer for it.
I understand the new policy, but I don’t think it’s a one-size-fits-all. It’s right to split some threads up; it’s right to leave some alone. I know that the H&A have already put a lot of thought into this, but I think deciding on a general policy of which threads to split, and leaving it to the discussion of the Hosts would be a better approach.
Good idea.
💡
I'd suggest having a labelled temporary sub-forum (within Purg) for each temporary 'big tent' issue. This allows normal purg not to be swamped but everyone knows where to go to discuss any aspect of that topic. This is is a bit like Dead Horses (or the stress topics idea), putting some issues aside but each broad issue is labelled and has its own space.
Good point. It would be nice if one could tick a box on a thread for "don't show me this in the recent discussions window". If one wanted to turn it off one could go find the thread on its board. If I ever write online discussion site software, that's what I'll include. Chances of my writing online discussion site software are as near zero as Zeno could wish.