I was thinking of suggesting Kareha to some kind of bigger website with a larger crowd where it sometimes might be sensible to be able to close threads instead of permasaging or deleting them. Could such an option for admins be implemented?
Seconded, that would be a handy feature.
What's the advantage of closing a thread over permasageing it?
Like a closed thread, permasaged threads don't clutter the recent topics list, but it's still possible for especially interested people to carry on the conversation without disturbing others. Maybe there'll be some last-minute insight that's worthy of basing a new thread on. Permasage is like a warning that tells posters in badly degenerated threads to get their act together. Or maybe it'll allow everyone involved to conclude with some last words and move on; much less oppressive than suddenly declaring that the discussion is over.
Sometimes as a mod you don't want to keep an eye on all the old, permasaged threads and don't want to bother to move the threads into archives per hand, either.
I don't know, I'm still not decided on the close-at-1000 behaviour, but I don' really see the use for a thread-closing option... If a thread has gone far enough out of control to need closing, it's not exactly headed for the archives anyway, is it? And there's not much need to moderate a permasaged thread either, is there?
I think you are assuming too much or not enough about the proceedings of various online communities in special cases. Sometimes, a thread will come a long on some forum, for instance, that starts out quite nicely. Then it develops into drama, HUGE drama - to the point of legal grey areas and further. So you gotta step in as a moderator and directly tell people to STFU & get a grip - but to allow "discussion" to continue from thereon is kinda pointless and perhaps even counter-productive. Personally, I wouldn't really want to check a dozen permasaged threads each day, and it's good to be able to point out to a thread that still exists as a form of responding to some frequent upcoming questions, even if it's closed.
> I'm still not decided on the close-at-1000 behaviour
If everyone sees it coming, I don't think it's a problem. Strong discussions will instantly spawn a continuation thread, pointless discussions will drown in their own noise. It's not so different from what happens now, when many threads die from lack of interest long before they hit 1000 posts.
Signed. Also, automatic-1000-closing encouraged interested parties to start a new thread on the same subject, being able to collect information for the initial posts better and being able to link back to the old discussion.
Maybe, but I'm still not entirely convinced. Seems to me that a permasaged thread would cool down pretty quick... And I prefer to show respect to users, which is why I don't like closing threads and "USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST" and such.
It's okay to respect the users but it's something different from effectively controlling and solving something that definitely got out of hand.
> And I prefer to show respect to users, which is why I don't like closing threads
But thread-closing at 1000 is automatic. It doesn't follow the preferences of a moderator team. It just sets an end to a thread which are just bound to die out in the end. If somebody were to start a fresh, new thread, it would be bad to have the old thread still around. Having to permasage each one is kind of a hassle. I'd like it better if mods wouldn't have to pay attention all the time to which thread is the most recent / best one and which to permasage. Thus, also, automatic closing at 1000 would prevent moderators from having to decide on the quality of threads. The interest of the board users alone, coupled with a common, unbiased and, in consequence, productive end of their discussions, still with the option to repeat the cycle anew.
That line was not about close-at-1000, it was about moderators closing threads. Threads permasage automatically at 1000 right now. There's no indication that this has happened, though, which might be a little bit strange.
> Threads permasage automatically at 1000 right now.
My point is that they should be closed, though. If moderators need to actively watch a very active board they cannot be required to look over each permasaged thread. That could get out of hand at a certain size of contributions (which I know isn't the case for most of the places Kareha is used at - yet) and it's not useful at all to keep a lot of permasaged threads opened at the bottom of a forum.
Sorry if this sounds rude, but could it be that you're just too lazy to implement an automatic closing function?
>>13
Programmers are inherently lazy. That's why they create things to save time.
Why not just delete the thing if it gets out of hand? Are you archiving threads forever or something?
I am always lazy. I see it as a good guard against making bloated software!
Seriously, though, I am not quite convinced either way about the automatic closing. On the one hand it is nice to have a goal where the discussion ends like that, but on the other hand, it's horribly arbitary.
I am not convinced either about there being a need to moderate permasaged threads. Most people will just forget about those real quick, which means it's no fun to make trouble in there. And if somebody does manage to make enough trouble that it is a problem (although I can't quite see how you'd do that, but people can be pretty ingenious), you can always leave it up to the users to tell the mods about it.
> it's horribly arbitary.
Seriously: So what?
> Most people will just forget about those real quick, which means it's no fun to make trouble in there.
I just want an environment in which content can easily be controlled (NOT forced).
Another thing is that closed threads are easier to automatically archive, if one requirement for a future automatic archiving function would be some maximum timespan in which a thread receives no contribution.
Well, on 2ch a thread can fairly easily reach 1000. On smaller boards, it may never happen. So no threads would ever be closed, and the feature is useless. Unless you lower the limit, but to what? In the end, I'd like a better solution, but I can't think of one.
> On smaller boards, it may never happen. So no threads would ever be closed, and the feature is useless.
Stop being pessimistic.
> Unless you lower the limit, but to what?
Let the admin decide in the config?
> Let the admin decide in the config?
That seems lazy, in a bad way.
> That seems lazy, in a bad way.
Stop being so politically overconscious.
Sure 1000 posts is arbitrary and something that probably won't be reached for a while by an english board, but if a thread can garner enough interest to fill that much space, surely it would get continuation threads by the interested participants?
It's not politics, it's my sense of program design that's bothered by this. I have a feeling there's a better solution that I just can't think of right now.
If you keep at it you'll probably wear me down though.
> If you keep at it you'll probably wear me down though.
I'll probably get tired of it soon, too. But whenever another thread passes the 1000, I'll come back.
Another argument can be filesize. Threads on 2channel are (also) automatically closed when they exceed 512KB of data.
Some threads on 4-ch are becoming quite big, btw. It's not yet a serious problem, but I think the next release or so might be a good idea to make the thread links automatically append an /l50.