Starship Asterisk*

It's making it difficult to follow the line of conversation, aside from that, who cares about a couple of duplicate threads when 90% of threads are spam anyway?

cheers!

l3p3r wrote:It's making it difficult to follow the line of conversation, aside from that, who cares about a couple of duplicate threads when 90% of threads are spam anyway?

cheers!

Maybe; but why even start a second thread when it's just as easy to post a reply to the original?
Orin

Often the only similarity between two threads is the associated image - the conversations are usually entirely different.

For example, the recent Martian shadow thread, one conversation was about the Heiligenschein effect and the other was about the formation of clouds. Now that the two are mixed indiscriminately it is difficult to follow the individual discussions.

It's silly. At least see if the conversations are the same before merging the threads, maybe?

I must admit you have a good point there. So your saying only merge the threads that have the same context? OK I can live with that; but sometimes the context changes anyway. [Seems like we're always drifting off toward BBT and black holes anyway.] What say Nereid!
Orin

Some good points here.

Norval

90% spam

in my opinion this whole problem of duplicating threads arose from designer mistake, namely, putting these two buttons together:



I mean what were they thinking, right? that made people who were 1st like "oh sht" now more like "oh whatever". the point is, if the rule sais, one thread per apod, use button. it's simple, isn't it.

now. you are saying you have troubles going through thread finding response you want? well, there's that button (yet some people can't seem to find it). personally, I have a problem going through forum thread list where there are dozens of threads on same subject, with exact "context" invisible behind obscure titles like "I have a question about todays APOD".

so. you want rule to be changed, in the end. for this purpose, I will edit this thread into a poll, and (try to) submit its results to people owning this board. will see how it will turn out.

It's going to come down to human judgement. Often we have a single image that inspires more than one chain of inquiry. I have also made the mistake of hitting the wrong button and ended up starting a new thread when I meant to reply. Such is life.

I am happy to leave things to the moderator to decide; after all, that is one of the functions a moderator performs. Consider that we can specifically use the title line to outline which idea we are targeting even if threads are merged.

I have no complaints with things as they are, if we just use the title to help readers along.

Even though 13p3r made some good points I must agree with Aichip.
to keep the forum clean I think 1 thread per APOD should be allowed; so even though it gets a little hairy at times I voted to keep things as is. Keep merging; but put the title of APOD and date in the new thread. I think this would help prevent duplicate threads.
Orin

aichip and l3p3r both made good points. Sometimes images are going to raise multiple questions. I believe each subject (not each apod) should have its own thread. Let the moderators decide which ones should be merged.

Why have a "newtopic" button if it's not to be used?

bystander wrote:Why have a "newtopic" button if it's not to be used?

It is to be used, once per APOD. Also, other astronomy-related questions were permitted, only not about same APOD.

ckam wrote:It is to be used, once per APOD. Also, other astronomy-related questions were permitted, only not about same APOD.

OK, I get that, but you have that opportunity outside the thread. Why would you go inside the thread of one APOD to create a new thread for a completely different APOD.

I makes sense if you are allowing the creation of a new thread for an existing APOD. One would need to look first to make sure their subject isn't being covered.

Take this thread for example, I wouldn't come here to create a new thread for today's APOD.

If you aren't going to allow multiple threads for APODs, then remove the newtopic from inside the thread. It would probably reduce your workload.

Like you said:

ckam wrote:in my opinion this whole problem of duplicating threads arose from designer mistake, namely, putting these two buttons together:

I really don't care, it's just a suggestion.

Excellent point- it is too easy to hit it through accident anyway. If it is removed, then a person must take the initiative to start a thread, not do it from within an existing one. I think this is a sensible move.

bystander wrote:remove the newtopic from inside the thread.

unfortunately, my powers are not quite enough to edit files on this server.

Excellent point about the button, but I'm not sure that accidental missed clicks are causing many of the duplicate topics.

Also, I think we can all help keep threads together by making sure we title them with the date and APOD title. Then hopefully new visitors will notice the picture they have a question on is already being discussed.


My personal opinion is to leave separate threads on the same APOD alone, unless duplicate threads are asking the same question. I know it's nice to keep the discussions grouped by picture, but merging the discussions is confusing, and I think stifles some of the tangents.


Application Example:
If someone starts a thread about Hyperion's craters and someone else starts one to ask how close Cassini was when it took the picture, leave those separate.

If one thread discusses how Hyperion's craters formed and one asks about the nature of the dark spots...well, those are similar but distinct. Use your best judgement.

If one thread discusses how Hyperion's craters formed and one asks whether the craters could be the result of an ancient civillization (not trying to flame CC or FI, I just needed an example), these are effectively the same question. Merge away.

iamlucky13 wrote:I'm not sure that accidental missed clicks are causing many of the duplicate topics.

They have created the culture of people never caring about making extra topic.

iamlucky13 wrote:hopefully new visitors will notice the picture they have a question on is already being discussed.

They will only notice if they will be forced to look for it.

iamlucky13 wrote:My personal opinion is to leave separate threads on the same APOD alone, unless duplicate threads are asking the same question.

you will have to define a formal rule by which mods are supposed to make a decision if the treads are asking same question or not. so far, 2 people voted for this option, but noone has defined such a rule.

ckam wrote:you will have to define a formal rule by which mods are supposed to make a decision if the treads are asking same question or not. so far, 2 people voted for this option, but noone has defined such a rule.

Sorry, I know my suggestion is still pretty arbitrary when it comes to a mod making decisions. I don't have particularly strong feelings on the matter, but I thought I'd try to help by offering my suggestion.

For the record, I was one of the two who voted for a different context criteria. I guess my feelings fit "I don't care" equally as well.

Anyway, much appreciation goes out to the mods who keep this site a friendly forum for discussion, especially with as popular as it seems to be with spammers.

Seems to me that if only people would make use of the "quote" button there would be no problem limiting APODs to one thread.
Several topics within a thread are easily followed with this method.
Perhaps the "post new" and "reply" buttons could be placed differently, but even this isn't really an issue if one would only look where they are clicking.

I think discussion about APODs should be confined to one thread.


Your friendly neighborhood lurker
AA

since this thread makes no progress, I'm unstickying it.

It takes one second worth of thought to be able to tell if two threads can merge without causing confusion and a breakdown of the discussion.

All I hope for is that the mod/mods will not merge for the sake of merging.

And also having 28 pages on Discuss APOD,and having around 10 pages on the Asterisk Cafe doesn't help either.

I once started to build an index and covered first two or three apod years, but nobody helped, so I 've got bored and stopped in the middle of it.

jesusfreak16 wrote:And also having 28 pages on Discuss APOD,and having around 10 pages on the Asterisk Cafe doesn't help either.

Think how many pages we would have if several threads were allowed for each APOD.

Orin

I think the Forum administrators, who all wear multiple hats already, are well advised to use the phpBB software straight from the can even if it has design flaws that occasionally might invite extra threads. You can tinker with commercial software, but then you're committed to doing it all over again when the next version of the product is released.

I like one thread per APOD and occasionally one thread per APOD-related topic that does not exclusively discuss a single APOD. However, general topics that relate to more than one APOD should not go on forever (imagine 100 pages of "gravitation" or "cosmology" or "globular clusters" or "Mars").

I think an orderly and minimal number of threads should be accomplished by contributors setting a good example and moderators doing housekeeping only when someone makes a mess. I think the moderators do as good a job combining, locking, moving, and removing threads as the contributors do creating and naming them - room for improvement for sure, but it works pretty well as it is and gives me very few problems finding previously posted material as long as I don't expect it to leap onto my screen without my investing any effort in the search.

If a moderator is going to combine two or more threads, it is important to do it soon after each additional thread is created (such as when a newcomer hits the wrong button). Otherwise, comments and replies can get shuffled and interleaved incomprehensibly when they are merged. Using the Quote feature helps avoid this problem, but many contributors who don't anticipate a later merge rightly avoid clutter by not quoting everything and just replying directly (which works fine until the merge and shuffle).

These next suggestions require some contributor discipline: How about "don't post anything too silly in a serious discussion" and "don't post anything serious in a silly discussion". Okay, we're here for fun as well as enlightenment, so we can't ban "silly", but don't mess up a serious thread with it - if you have the urge to be light-hearted and creative, save it for the next likely APOD that does not draw serious technical discussion. But what should a serious contributor do when a silly thread has already been established? Why should the point get lost in the clutter? I suggest that the serious contributor start a new thread and name it well to distinguish it from its less serious cousin. I suggest that the moderators see what the serious contributor is doing and not merge the threads; in fact, if contributors have combined serious and silly (or other incompatible) material, a moderator could split the posts into two or more topics. Renaming topics for clarity is another moderator option that might be easier and better than merging in some cases.

And now I'm just like the newcomer who can't find the right button - I can't find anything that will let me vote in the poll. I'm logged in and it says "You can vote in polls in this forum" at the bottom of my screen, but I don't see how. Could someone be so kind as to educate me?

2apodman, I've been saying that to craterchains I think, if you think you know better how to moderate, apply Personally, I do not remember when was the last time I have merged any threads or removed any spam - months ago maybe... so it is either Nereid herself or astro_uk now.