I feel quite strongly that discussion should be productive and useful. Of course people are free to talk as long as they like, but then there's plenty of places on the internet where people can hold long discussions with each other, YouTube video comments, Facebook posts, even email.
Metabunk is about exposing bunk, about whittling things down closer to the truth. Unfortunately there seems to have increasingly been several threads that drag on and on, branching into multiple topics, and never actually resolving anything. They have no focus, and anything useful is buried pages deep, lost to anyone looking for something specific.
I try to split threads into more focussed subjects where possible, but it can be quite tricky when multiple topics overlap, which becomes increasingly more likely the longer a thread gets.
So I'm considering some limit on the length of threads. Unless it can be tightly focussed to the original topic, I do not think that any thread should go over 100 posts. If it goes over 80 posts (two pages), and the are multiple topics then warning will be given that the thread need to be split, and/or shut down.
The simplest way would be to just lock the thread. Then if the discussion needs to be continued, then people can start a new topic (appropriately titled) with a link back to the last relevant post in the old thread. A moderator can then add a response to that post, linking to the new thread. If previous posts are sufficiently extricable, then they can be moved to the new thread.
To that end, I also suggest that people restrict their actual posts to single topics. If there's two topics in a post you are replying to, then make two responses.
Feedback, yay/nay on this idea is appreciated.
Metabunk is about exposing bunk, about whittling things down closer to the truth. Unfortunately there seems to have increasingly been several threads that drag on and on, branching into multiple topics, and never actually resolving anything. They have no focus, and anything useful is buried pages deep, lost to anyone looking for something specific.
I try to split threads into more focussed subjects where possible, but it can be quite tricky when multiple topics overlap, which becomes increasingly more likely the longer a thread gets.
So I'm considering some limit on the length of threads. Unless it can be tightly focussed to the original topic, I do not think that any thread should go over 100 posts. If it goes over 80 posts (two pages), and the are multiple topics then warning will be given that the thread need to be split, and/or shut down.
The simplest way would be to just lock the thread. Then if the discussion needs to be continued, then people can start a new topic (appropriately titled) with a link back to the last relevant post in the old thread. A moderator can then add a response to that post, linking to the new thread. If previous posts are sufficiently extricable, then they can be moved to the new thread.
To that end, I also suggest that people restrict their actual posts to single topics. If there's two topics in a post you are replying to, then make two responses.
Feedback, yay/nay on this idea is appreciated.