unforum

[Matt9882]

[Suggestion] Trouted posts

[SpaceBass]

Thanks for the input!

[Matt9882]

No problem. Taking a little bit of my previous Admin/Mod experience and applying it here. I'm not sure if it will fit this board's dynamic, but it has always worked when I've used it in the past. I find that linking and locking duplicate threads tends to lead to a more concise picture on one thread, and that can help the flow of information and ideas - something that would seem to be espically helpful in the ARG world.

[Euchre]

Reposted from a thread that was trouted to point here:

Being this forum is speculative in nature, so there will be disagreements and many threads created to discuss various elements involved in various combinations. Sometimes it's hard to say if a subject is different enough to warrant the application of the 'trout' concept. In such cases, multiple threads with apparently the same topical basis may exist and may experience cross-posting where the subject matter tends to overlap. This is only a 2 dimensional linear threaded model, so we can't integrate it in any more refined a way.

I think one thing that causes such frustrations is that trouting is supposed to have a different outcome than it often does. When a new user especially is trouted, they tend to go silent when others are celebrating a trout in an 'in your face' sort of way. A more tenured member may take this well when they are trouted, but new members would only be discouraged or offended.

What should happen when a person is trouted is that they and everyone seeing the topic should carry their information and discussion to the existing thread. This buoys up older threads which may have a subject matter which bears revisiting or might benefit from new information. The OP of the trout should take that information and repost it in the thread pointed to, and thus bring the thread back up, and allow the trouted thread to drop. If the trout is a post in a thread, it's just a matter of carrying the information to the other thread. If this was the result of most troutings, I suspect locking of trout threads wouldn't be seen as such a potential detriment to the dialog on the forums.

[Matt9882]

See, but that's just the thing. While the purpose of the trout is to lead the thread originator to where his/her information is most useful, it only happens about 50% of the time (from what I've seen lurking and posting in the past month or so). However, with the wave of newer users - here mostly for Cloverfield, and with (presumably) little to no previous forum experience - many trouted threads are continuing on. This seems to have caused much information to become fragmented, and we now have several threads with the same discussion, as opposed to many people participating in one discussion on the same topic. I understand your concept, and not wanting to squash the lines of though, but leaving a touted thread open for (potentially) a new user to bring back from the dead seems counterproductive. I just don't see why we cant lock a thread that were to come out today that says:

[Matt9882]

Look, I dont mean to go off on a tangent here, and if you decide to keep things as-is I certinaly will not take it personally.... but just take a look at the thread I reference here:

http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=24049

You can't believe that not locking this thread is benificial to the forum. As we know, there are many more like this, and all they do is bog things down. If this was locked when it was trouted, there would've been no flaming, no postwhoring... I dont know, perhaps I'm over-zealous.

[Mikeyj]

Have now tagged as Trout (thanks )

Let's use it as an experiment and (excusing dishonest bumping which I wouldn't have thought an honourable gentleman like yourself capable of) see where it goes now.

[Matt9882]