Usually I scroll up to about 100-300 messages from the end (depends on how much I feel like reading) and then read down from there. No-one’s expected to take every single post to heart.
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Wanderthread exists the way it does for a reason. People were complaining about depressing posts all over the place and Wanderthread is a round-up thread (similar to the ones at TOP).
I would say that if you see something in one of those threads that you want to spin off into a separate conversation, fine, there is a “reply as new topic” button, but the alternative is cluttering the board with a billion new threads any time something comes up related to those threads.
If you don’t like round-ups, you don’t have to read them, but having them makes it easier for those of us who want to watch and contribute to those to be able to, instead of having to reply to twelve different tangentially related threads across the board.
When I joined TOP, there were lots of those threads. Still are, though less used these days. I took them as a sign of the things the community was passionate about, read when I had time, or skipped to the end if it was current event related.
Just because something doesn’t work for someone, doesn’t mean it doesn’t work for everyone.
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Wanderthread basically is that topic. The rest of us active in there post mostly with that understanding.
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My personal pet peeve is this one:
I think this would definitely benefit from being split into multiple topics, either at the end of each AMA session, or by linking to a new topic from the central one each time a new AMA starts. Each topic could be tagged or categorized appropriately so that people would get the notifications they need, but we wouldn’t have the situation where there are a dozen intentionally separate conversations stacked end-to-end.
I am also a fan of automatically expiring topics, but in fairness some of my old topics have recently been resurrected with interesting discussion.
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This is a good idea.
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I don’t like roundup threads like that.
There is a lot of stuff in Wanderthread that interests me, but a fair amount that doesn’t, and even the stuff that interests me I’ve likely seen before in other places. So I have to wade through stuff I don’t want to look at, and stuff I’m tired of looking at for the nth time, to stuff that interests me. Moreover, there’s no discussion. If there were discussion, I could understand looking at something I’ve seen many times already, just as long as there’s a fresh perspective that I’ve never seen before.
This thread is different from the roundup threads at That Other Place, because there was some discussion over there.
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Could be there’s no discussion because few people can be arsed to wade through the firehose. Maybe that one would work better as a Category, with individual threads within.
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I do so love resurrected threads. Seriously! But yeah, some would benefit from expiring before they get too unwieldy. I think a 5-day expiry default might be too short, but… Maybe users who start a new thread can decide if their thread should be open-ended or not? Something like Count to 10,000 should obviously be open-ended, and Questions worked well that way too. The AMA threads should definitely be split off and timed to expire. Other threads… well, timed to taste? Is that feasible?
I really enjoy conversational drift. I like you guys, and I like the way you think, and some of the best insights here come from OT birdwalking. Obviously, some threads need to be more tightly monitored to prevent threadjacking than others, but on the whole I prefer a light hand on the tiller. We’re mostly all grownups here.
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The expiration settings can definitely be set at the category level, but I don’t think they can be set more finely than that. That’s why there is a 5-day expiration on blog post topics at BB, and a rolling 30(?) day window on other topics.
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Hmm. Do TL2 users have the ability to lock their own threads?
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As far as I can tell, no.
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Hmm. Mild bummer. So I take it @messana has to ask one of you guys to manually lock his Badass threads. Minor inconvenience.
Well, maybe we could have the Games category be open-ended, create a new Category called, I dunno, Eternal Verities in which to move ongoing endless threads like Wanderthread, and give all other categories an expiration length of, say, 10 days? I think 5 is too short, even for hot newsworthy items, but 10 feels like plenty. Whaddaya think?
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He locks his own threads, I assume. 
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Oh, is he a mod? Or have a TL status that permits it?
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He’s an admin. @ChickieD is the only official mod, with @tinoesroho pulling double-duty and @waetherman and I mostly staying out of the way.
The About page should always be up to date, if you need to double-check.
I can’t find a way to grant topic closing powers based on TL, but I’ll dig a little deeper before making a final declaration.
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Ah, thanks. Totally forgot he was an admin.
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Ah, one of the traditional great debates of online discussions.
I have always been a splitter rather than a lumper, but so many people disagree so vehemently.
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I am getting a distinct “go away weird kid, you’re frightening the normals” from this sort of thing.
In some of these cases, we were having smaller conversations, and everybody said “hey, you’re bringing us down and dampening the mood of the party” so we found a corner booth and staked it out and started having our conversations there precisely because we were asked not to have our conversations (and yes, there really are conversations) in with everyone else. Now we’re being told that the conversation we took to the corner as an accommodation to everyone else isn’t inclusive enough and is intimidating.
You think that there is something in one of those threads that needs pulling out? Nobody is stopping you. Reply as new topic isn’t just for derails, but also works wonderfully when you want to narrow the scope of something.
Why do you have to stifle someone else’s conversation, just to have one of your own?
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