Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Policy & Help >

On news threads, closing threads and the 9/11 forum

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:14 / 10.10.01

quote:Originally posted by Kooky:
would it hurt you lot to post stuff like this IN THE NEWS THREAD???
please? closing this one now. moving links to the NEWS thread.

With the greatest respect, it strikes me that something like the confirmation of four UN workers killed in Kabul more than warrants its own thread.

Even if not, might it not be preferable for moderators to ask people to post in the news thread in future, and then leave them the opportunity to argue their case for doing otherwise? Closing a thread for further posting on a matter of policy that hasn't been even discussed strikes me as... not the way things are normally moderated around here. Feel free to disagree, anyone.

23:10 / 11.10.01

I agree. Threads should not be closed for further posting without agreement from the topic starter.

As far as posting things in a NEWS thread, I would actually be opposed to this. I usually stay away from 3 page threads I haven't started reading yet unless I have some time on my hands. Stringing a bunch of news topics together would only make discussion more confusing.

Tom, are we having problems on the board? I clicked on "On news threads, closing threads and the 9/11 forum" and got "Elmo is taking a piss" I started to respond to that, and was back here at this thread.

sirius

01:20 / 12.10.01

Flyboy,
When I registered for Barbelith Underground,
I missed the part about locking someone out of a topic because their questions were too direct and to the point.
I also missed the part about not asking why when someone refuses to give an honest answer to an honest question becoming reason to shut down access by the person asking the honest question.
What is going on here?
Is "lith really the conservatives' spider web on the internet, catching adherents of free speech and trying to suck the life blood out of them?
Or do you have "protected" members who are not to be subjected to valid criticism?

Regrettable Juvenilia

07:20 / 12.10.01

As I told you when you e-mailed me, sirius, I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. I haven't locked you out of any threads, and I suspect you've just been the victim of technical difficulties which sometimes plague the board (yes, to the extent even of damaging individual members' ability to log in). Ease up on the paranoia.

Frances Farmer

15:44 / 16.10.01

I don't think it would be appropriate for me to argue my own case in this context.

16:29 / 16.10.01

Kooky is applying a model copped from the Warren Ellis Forum, where it is very useful. However, though it's being used here with the best will in the world, the Warren Ellis model is a bad fit to the Barbelith board style.

I don't think anybody's using Barbelith as a primary source for information (which had been the case, briefly, on the Ellis board)--or haven't been for quite a while.

It's far more in the nature of this board to be a spot for debate, discussion, and activism--rather than a simple news ticker.

Ellis wants news items in a single thread to keep the thread churn down. That's a useful model on his board; but his board is structured very differently to this one. The "General" section there teems with discussions of music, film, books, TV, and weird science--all of which have their own sections here at Barbelith.

The thread churn on the "New World Crisis" folder has been pretty manageable so far. We could just let natural selection take care of it...

On the other hand, I can see where it would be useful to consolidate all news items into a single thread for one-glance info dump.

How about this: if you've got a new item that you think deserves its own discussion thread, set one up; but also cross-post the nugget of the story to the "News" thread. Best of both worlds...

10:25 / 17.10.01

quote:Originally posted by Jack Fear:
On the other hand, I can see where it would be useful to consolidate all news items into a single thread for one-glance info dump.

that's all i was aiming for. there are people -- myself included -- who have neither time, nor (maybe) inclination to wade through multiple new threads on similar subjects, and when that one started, there were already news threads up.

i think starting a new thread when something veers off into new territory is great, but if there are already several threads on the same or similar topics, there doesn't seem much point in starting a new one? which is what people were/are doing. do we really need a new thread for every single bit of information? i don't think so, myself. it makes it hard to follow what's going on, and as i know there are probably a lot of people who joined the 'lith in the wake of 911 and probably use that forum to catch up on what's happening, i wanted to try and make it easier/more user-friendly for everyone. not trying to impinge an agenda or stifle anyone.

Frances Farmer

03:25 / 25.10.01

quote:
that's all i was aiming for. there are people -- myself included -- who have neither time, nor (maybe) inclination to wade through multiple new threads on similar subjects, and when that one started, there were already news threads up.

This makes complete sense to me.

I guess my intention was to center a discussion about that particular shnippet; not just an info dump. I saw it as particularly serious, and I wanted to know how it had impacted other folks.

But, I totally see, especially considering it fizzled, how it would've resulted in greater churn.

I hadn't been aware, however, of the fact that it had already been brought up -- I just heard about it and posted it out of a weird combination of excitement and horror.

quote:
i think starting a new thread when something veers off into new territory is great, but if there are already several threads on the same or similar topics, there doesn't seem much point in starting a new one? which is what people were/are doing. do we really need a new thread for every single bit of information? i don't think so, myself. it makes it hard to follow what's going on, and as i know there are probably a lot of people who joined the 'lith in the wake of 911 and probably use that forum to catch up on what's happening, i wanted to try and make it easier/more user-friendly for everyone. not trying to impinge an agenda or stifle anyone.

I didn't get that impression at all -- I was really just worried I had stepped on your toes.

I get where you're coming from, and I didn't really take serious issue with it -- but that's not where I was trying to go with it. I just thought it was worthy of it's own discussion, is all. So, y'know, how 'bout this:

If you're trying to start a discussion, we can preface a thread title with something that makes it clear it's not just an update -- as I think has been suggested already. Perhaps it'll even result in more lively discussing on particular items, or a more thorough examination. And that way, the flurry of one-liner headlines and mentions of the latest can be kept to a single thread, while everybody knows where to go if they really feel like discussing the bit.

Whad'ya'll think of that?

Regrettable Juvenilia

07:22 / 25.10.01

W'all think you're right.