New Threads and new fellow-posters

Dear all, this is a personal plea and in no sense the reflection of a Mod/Admin consensus.
However, for what it's worth I think that one of the major problems undermining the coherence and cohesiveness of the Board is the veritable flood of new threads: a page is filled; all continuity is lost.
For example - on Terrorism, just now, almost all of Page 1 is to-days "threads" (not, I emphasise, postings).
As an instance - 5 could all have been posted under "N. Korea": half under "is war with Iraq imminent?" or some such.
Often, it's just a Ctrl+V anyway; but where it is good, all continuity with related postings, all chance of a sustained discussion, is lost. ( I am sure this cannot be deliberate)
Could posters at least try to find an available topic before they charge into a new one?
Or is Estragon at a funny age (again!)?

I'd have to agree Estragon...

As the only functioning authority (with only the powers of a Mod) at another board, I'm facing the same problem...Whether or not I have the time (& frankly, the ambition) to merge individual posts into coherent threads about the same discussion. As it is, multiple threads about the same topic is becoming a problem there too.

It would be a bit easier for me to dredge up the ambition to do so if I knew I'd at least be getting some help & "official" backup in making judgment calls while doing so...

Sigh! I wish that the one-n-only Admin there (who happens to own the site) would stop in long enough to even give someone Admin power to help him with the site-administration...Like Simon has done with you guys here.

Sigh!...I feel like a City Mayor who's been given the responsibility of a Monarch but still having no more *authority* than the position of Mayor...


I think the initial problem lies with the fact that most "new members" get too lazy to look through the long lists of thread-titles to post in an already-existing discussion...Instead, they just start a new thread. What that means to an Admin or Mod is that they're now faced with larger bandwidth costs & a hesp of extra work to either organize the whole thing coherently or simply just delete a lot of old threads. The problem with the latter choice is obvious; Loss of good info because the a thread itself was deleted due to a lot of repetitive threads on the same discussion.


[Edited on 9-3-2003 by MidnightDStroyer]

Does XMB have scripting available so that members can search topics/threads for text-strings?

I ask this because I would find references much easier for the purpose of trying to keep frequent repetitive posting down to a managable level...How much easier it would be for posters to be able to delete a repetitive thread by themselves, if someone else can tell them where to find an earlier thread that discusses the same topic?

...This *may* just cut down on the work that Admins/Mods have to go through to try to keep some coherence on these boards...
(wink, wink, nudge, nudge)

I know another problem, we have too many sections.

For instance we can have secret societies and NWO as one.

Annoncments and CDrom as one instead of 4.
Multimedia uploads and other information as one probably too.

Government & Military Projects/Programs & Military & Government Facilities DEFINETLY AS ONE.

And maybe aircraft and technology as one too.

To many sections.
And get rid of seti ! 9 topics in a year, wastes my vaulable scrolling time!

[Edited on 10-3-2003 by Tyler]