Posted on 2009-09-30 21:03 UTC by thomas p. Status: Under consideration
sometimes a tmo thread gets immensely popular, and before you know it has hundreds of posts. the thread subject might be interesting, but reading all posts could be too time-consuming. how can added value be extracted from excessively long tmo threads?
for example, due to the high volume of posts in popular threads, quite often people post questions that have already been answered in the very same thread.
Posted on 2009-09-30 21:08 UTC by thomas p.
one effective way of limiting the amount of visible posts in a long tmo thread would be an option to only view posts that have been thanked. if that still generates too many posts, then the threshold for visibility could be adjusted to n amounts of thanks.
Posted on 2009-09-30 21:11 UTC by thomas p.
when replying in a long thread, an option could be added to mark a post as a "summary". this could be, for example, shown by a different colored background. in this way, anyone who feels like it could write a 'summary' post at any given point in the thread.
(extra: possibility to view summary-posts only)
Posted on 2009-10-22 19:25 UTC by Andreas Behr.
Create a part of the forum where every thread can only be 20 posts long.
Possible addition:
- thread starter can make post not count to total (and hide them in a standard view)
Posted on 2009-11-29 10:37 UTC by Stephen Birch.
Permit the thread to be sorted in different ways so the more relevant comments are displayed first. Examples are "Reverse message post time", "number of thank yous".
Posted on 2009-12-10 10:36 UTC by thomas p.
thanks / no thanks buttons would be the equivalent of thumbs up or down which is implemented at digg.com, reddit.com and engadget.com to name a few.
for example, 0-5 no thanks: post is greyed/dimmed
5+ no thanks: only a link to the post is visible and clickable.
Posted on 2009-12-11 08:50 UTC by thomas p.
one specific summary post in at the end of the thread, editable by the thread starter and anyone he/she decides to add as a summary editor.
Posted on 2009-12-15 15:10 UTC by thomas p.
a lot of posts asks for stuff that has already been answered either in another thread, or even within the same thread. an option to click "already answered" would result in the following text appended to the post: "the following user(s) think this has already been answered. [search this thread] [search this sub-forum] [search tmo] [google tmo search]"
