I was originally going to call this thread, "Should MacRumors Use SlashCode?," but I hate when people immediately suggest solutions to me, so here's the problem:
I can't effectively keep up with 600+ post threads. I think this is a problem with the vBulletin interface, but I'm posting this in case people have suggestions.
When threads get really long it's almost not worth going into them because it takes so long to catch up on what's been said already, and it's quite hard to follow conversations in a non-nested form. I know, some people just don't read all the posts but this just makes the forum get full of noise and repeated questions.
I've tried the threaded mode, but it's quite slow to use when I'm not on my high-speed connection and the tiny little thread window is quite frustrating. Besides, you still have to click through 20 pages of posts in a large thread. On a Slash site, you're not going to get to a second page of posts until you have at least that many posts.
I think the root cause of these symptoms is the lack of moderation. If I was reading an entire thread on a Slash site without threading and without scoring it might be about as bad, but noone would do that, for a good reason. The inferior threadding interface in vBulletin is certainly a problem, but the lack of moderation just makes it worse. I certainly see some posts here that I'd rather not see at all, and I trust the collective judgement of most of the readership here to insulate me from them. Together we can improve the signal to noise ratio.
Another problem I have is that there doesn't seem to be a way to get e-mail notifications just on responses to my posts. I'm sorry, but I only have so much time in the day - I'd love to continue more conversations but I'm sure I miss some responses to my posts because I just don't have the time to always go back and keep re-reading every thread in case someone has responded. In fact, I would argue this keeps some of the best talent around here away, at least proportionally. I hate to generalize, but the average after-school highschooler has more time to participate in MacRumors than those in the industry (who might have relevant information) and low-content posts can be deleterious to the succinctness of a thread, further exacerbating the problem.
I don't think these 'features' of vBulletin actually increase ad revenue as compared with a site layed out more like a Slash site - there are more pages to load at the top level of a thread, but by being flat instead of nested you're only going to get 20 page views on a big thread - often in nested layouts you get a page-view per comment, if the moderation is deep enough. Besides that, increased participation/membership equals increased page views.
Anyhow, maybe I'm just missing the boat and this is all possible on MacRumors today. Please add your comments.
I can't effectively keep up with 600+ post threads. I think this is a problem with the vBulletin interface, but I'm posting this in case people have suggestions.
When threads get really long it's almost not worth going into them because it takes so long to catch up on what's been said already, and it's quite hard to follow conversations in a non-nested form. I know, some people just don't read all the posts but this just makes the forum get full of noise and repeated questions.
I've tried the threaded mode, but it's quite slow to use when I'm not on my high-speed connection and the tiny little thread window is quite frustrating. Besides, you still have to click through 20 pages of posts in a large thread. On a Slash site, you're not going to get to a second page of posts until you have at least that many posts.
I think the root cause of these symptoms is the lack of moderation. If I was reading an entire thread on a Slash site without threading and without scoring it might be about as bad, but noone would do that, for a good reason. The inferior threadding interface in vBulletin is certainly a problem, but the lack of moderation just makes it worse. I certainly see some posts here that I'd rather not see at all, and I trust the collective judgement of most of the readership here to insulate me from them. Together we can improve the signal to noise ratio.
Another problem I have is that there doesn't seem to be a way to get e-mail notifications just on responses to my posts. I'm sorry, but I only have so much time in the day - I'd love to continue more conversations but I'm sure I miss some responses to my posts because I just don't have the time to always go back and keep re-reading every thread in case someone has responded. In fact, I would argue this keeps some of the best talent around here away, at least proportionally. I hate to generalize, but the average after-school highschooler has more time to participate in MacRumors than those in the industry (who might have relevant information) and low-content posts can be deleterious to the succinctness of a thread, further exacerbating the problem.
I don't think these 'features' of vBulletin actually increase ad revenue as compared with a site layed out more like a Slash site - there are more pages to load at the top level of a thread, but by being flat instead of nested you're only going to get 20 page views on a big thread - often in nested layouts you get a page-view per comment, if the moderation is deep enough. Besides that, increased participation/membership equals increased page views.
Anyhow, maybe I'm just missing the boat and this is all possible on MacRumors today. Please add your comments.
), and unless I want to know something specific (might skim or search the thread) I just ignore it.
