Moderators: richierich, ua900, PanAm_DC10, hOMSaR
DLPMMM wrote:With all respect to the moderators and the site management…
Why not get rid of all the mega threads about a single airline or a single country?
The proliferation of these threads over the last decades has had the effect of Balkanizing the website into little groups that argue among themselves about petty details…meanwhile the more interesting news and events of an airline or area get buried in these Hatfield and McCoy threads where the overall aviation enthusiasts will never find it.
I would suggest going back to a format where news events or legitimate questions form the topic for each thread and that thread is allowed to die a natural death when the topic has been exhausted.
I fly around the world regularly (until COVID) and find the news of many airlines interesting, but to go through the airline or country specific thread to find news that may or may not be there is a waste of time.
Just my 2 cents
sergegva wrote:At the moment we have 39 mega threads (most beeing American state / American airport discussion thread) vs 7 "other" threads in the first page of the Civil Aviation Forum. This is getting very unbalanced and not very attractive to read imho
TVNWZ wrote:sergegva wrote:At the moment we have 39 mega threads (most beeing American state / American airport discussion thread) vs 7 "other" threads in the first page of the Civil Aviation Forum. This is getting very unbalanced and not very attractive to read imho
I find the whole concept not very efficient to read and I spend way to much time scrolling to find the discussion I am interested in. But, it appears that’s a minority opinion.
atcsundevil wrote:TVNWZ wrote:sergegva wrote:At the moment we have 39 mega threads (most beeing American state / American airport discussion thread) vs 7 "other" threads in the first page of the Civil Aviation Forum. This is getting very unbalanced and not very attractive to read imho
I find the whole concept not very efficient to read and I spend way to much time scrolling to find the discussion I am interested in. But, it appears that’s a minority opinion.
We actually started very few of these threads. Nearly all of them were originally created by members wanting these discussions, and we've simply locked and recycled them from one year to the next (or in some cases quarterly or monthly). You can tell based on the (albeit subtle) inconsistencies of a lot of the thread titles that they were created by different people at different times. A number of these threads go back to before the site migration five years ago. The United Fleet Thread, for example, existed for several years before the switch. There were 60 some-odd iterations of that thread due to our needing to lock after 250 posts because of the old site's limitations. The new site simply made long running discussions more practical, and it's something many other forums across the internet do as well. Some competing forums keep threads running that are a decade or more old with thousands of posts — we don't keep threads open for longer than a year.
This arrangement was initially encouraged by us, but grew into its present form organically. Many of these threads have regular active users and their own little subcultures, and frankly that isn't a dynamic that we're looking to disrupt, mostly because we don't feel that it's our place to do so. We all wish there was a better way of organizing these discussions, but since we lack support from the site developers to make actual formatting changes, this is really all that can be done. Ultimately, we're not going to break these threads up for a multitude of reasons. I wouldn't even know how we'd go about doing it even if we wanted to. Most users prefer this arrangement, despite it being cumbersome.
TVNWZ wrote:atcsundevil wrote:TVNWZ wrote:
I find the whole concept not very efficient to read and I spend way to much time scrolling to find the discussion I am interested in. But, it appears that’s a minority opinion.
We actually started very few of these threads. Nearly all of them were originally created by members wanting these discussions, and we've simply locked and recycled them from one year to the next (or in some cases quarterly or monthly). You can tell based on the (albeit subtle) inconsistencies of a lot of the thread titles that they were created by different people at different times. A number of these threads go back to before the site migration five years ago. The United Fleet Thread, for example, existed for several years before the switch. There were 60 some-odd iterations of that thread due to our needing to lock after 250 posts because of the old site's limitations. The new site simply made long running discussions more practical, and it's something many other forums across the internet do as well. Some competing forums keep threads running that are a decade or more old with thousands of posts — we don't keep threads open for longer than a year.
This arrangement was initially encouraged by us, but grew into its present form organically. Many of these threads have regular active users and their own little subcultures, and frankly that isn't a dynamic that we're looking to disrupt, mostly because we don't feel that it's our place to do so. We all wish there was a better way of organizing these discussions, but since we lack support from the site developers to make actual formatting changes, this is really all that can be done. Ultimately, we're not going to break these threads up for a multitude of reasons. I wouldn't even know how we'd go about doing it even if we wanted to. Most users prefer this arrangement, despite it being cumbersome.
Everything you say I understand. However, while it may have started organically, as you write, the moderation of moving tangential topics to the mega thread is the problem for me. You could have a big thread about ..let’s say..engine manufacturing. If someone posts a thread of a sub contractor undergoing financial problems it will be moved to the big, engine manufacturing thread. Why not let these tangential discussions continue for those interested in that part of the discussion, but not the nitty gritty of the bigger topic?
Even today, you divide up air shows into sales for a particular manufacturer. That seems to work well. Why can not other major topics be divided up as well, instead of discouraged?
And, yes, I know your problems and limitations. I feel for all the mods and thank you for all you do.
TVNWZ wrote:atcsundevil wrote:TVNWZ wrote:
I find the whole concept not very efficient to read and I spend way to much time scrolling to find the discussion I am interested in. But, it appears that’s a minority opinion.
We actually started very few of these threads. Nearly all of them were originally created by members wanting these discussions, and we've simply locked and recycled them from one year to the next (or in some cases quarterly or monthly). You can tell based on the (albeit subtle) inconsistencies of a lot of the thread titles that they were created by different people at different times. A number of these threads go back to before the site migration five years ago. The United Fleet Thread, for example, existed for several years before the switch. There were 60 some-odd iterations of that thread due to our needing to lock after 250 posts because of the old site's limitations. The new site simply made long running discussions more practical, and it's something many other forums across the internet do as well. Some competing forums keep threads running that are a decade or more old with thousands of posts — we don't keep threads open for longer than a year.
This arrangement was initially encouraged by us, but grew into its present form organically. Many of these threads have regular active users and their own little subcultures, and frankly that isn't a dynamic that we're looking to disrupt, mostly because we don't feel that it's our place to do so. We all wish there was a better way of organizing these discussions, but since we lack support from the site developers to make actual formatting changes, this is really all that can be done. Ultimately, we're not going to break these threads up for a multitude of reasons. I wouldn't even know how we'd go about doing it even if we wanted to. Most users prefer this arrangement, despite it being cumbersome.
Everything you say I understand. However, while it may have started organically, as you write, the moderation of moving tangential topics to the mega thread is the problem for me. You could have a big thread about ..let’s say..engine manufacturing. If someone posts a thread of a sub contractor undergoing financial problems it will be moved to the big, engine manufacturing thread. Why not let these tangential discussions continue for those interested in that part of the discussion, but not the nitty gritty of the bigger topic?
Even today, you divide up air shows into sales for a particular manufacturer. That seems to work well. Why can not other major topics be divided up as well, instead of discouraged?
And, yes, I know your problems and limitations. I feel for all the mods and thank you for all you do.
bigb wrote:What about additional sub forums for general topics under Civil Aviation. Like a sub forums for Boeing Topics, Airbus topics, Other Manufacturers, Airport topics, Networks, Fleets, etc….