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Is that really necessary (re long SR22 thread)?

I have cleaned it up a bit and unlocked it.

Keep it informative, please. And, as they say, play the ball, not the man.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Is this going to outrun the original “Why has the SR22 been such a success?” thread?

Personally I don’t believe threads should be locked unless for legal reasons or the thread is just plain offensive but that is just my opinion

EHLE / Lelystad, Netherlands, Netherlands

Thank you, David. It’s all good.

What Patrick suggests is done in some forums in the form of a (truly) threaded discussion. So any message posted (other than the opening post) to the thread is in reply to another post already on it, and then you can view the responses in this threaded way. Technically we could do it, but I’m disinclined. It works ok for some types of discussion and less well for others, but most casual users find it confusing. But moreover, I don’t think it suits the tone of EuroGA; this forum isn’t a conversation between individuals, most of the time it’s people asking questions and receiving a variety of viewpoints in response.

Most moderation decisions on forums, whether it be here or elsewhere (other forums we operate get 25,000 posts a day) are a bit “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”. Anybody who gets too upset about a forum moderation decision should perhaps consider moving on or at least taking a break.

Flyer59, in your specific case, I think perhaps, whilst understanding completely that you’re not taking it all too seriously, you’re missing the point that Peter locking that thread wasn’t a punishment. It wasn’t even a big deal, you’re obviously vocal with loads of great posts on many many threads, this was just one. As far as I know you weren’t asked to not post, you weren’t being told off or admonished at all. Using the oft-used “forum discussion akin to a debate in a pub with your friends”, this is more akin to responding to a group discussion with which you’ve become exasperated with “Oh bloody hell, I’m off to the bar, who wants a drink?” rather than “I can’t believe you said that, get out of my sight”.

Personally (and I say this as 100% supportive of Peter’s work, though it also demonstrates that he and I don’t have to agree on everything), I’m not keen on locking threads. Clearly they sometimes reduce to two people batting things back and forth, but I’m ok with that. After all, that’s what the “Hide” button is for. One click and you won’t be troubled by a thread again. Some people do like reading those kind of threads. The thread about the SR22 has been the most viewed thread in the last month despite only being about 10 days old, so I’m not sure nobody wants to read it even when it’s become a “round and round in circles” type thread. It’s true that it’s a longer thread, so more pages for those that have few posts displayed per page, but it’s actually been picking up in the last couple of days.

It is a deliberate strategy to keep EuroGA free from lots of banter and instead focus on people making informed, substantial posts. Clearly that suits some people, and many people on this thread and elsewhere have commented that they like it, but not others. That’s ok. There are forums enough for everyone.

Administrator
EGTR / London, United Kingdom

Let’s not make all this more important than it really is (how boring is it?) but I think I disagree:

The SR22 thread was actually interesting enough for many and not completely childish. Okay, there were some silly remarks by me, and maybe by others too, … but I wonder why everything has to be taken so seriously, especially when comments are marked with a :-) or ;-)

And Peter, when I published that list of the first 15 CAPS saves, wasn’t it you who would ridicule that by implying that all those pilots were losers who couldn’t fly, prepare a flight or had bad judgement? How about your repeated argument against CAPS that it “would sometimes not open”, just because it had failed ONE time after the service center had made a mistake. I had explained that one to you before – but you still repeat it in every discussion about CAPS. Is that helpful?

But really, while you might have that impression, none of this upsets me one bit. If you think you have to be that strict, go ahead. But I was actually surprised you reacted this way – because you know me in person. If your intention is to make this place a sterile environment for people who will never passionately defend their opinion … well then I better read more in the future and write less. ;-) (joke)

(I like the idea that we are all different but can, at least, tolerate each others personalities)

Last Edited by Flyer59 at 21 Oct 11:36

The other thing I forgot to mention is that whenever there is a long and tedious thread going on, a lot of people leave the forum and don’t come back for ages. Some probably never come back. This is probably because the Active list (which is what most people use) gets filled up with the tedious stuff which almost nobody wants to read.

An interesting idea, Patrick… would be very novel for a forum! I am not sure how many people would be willing/able to work within a tight topic structure because discussions naturally migrate to related topics. It works on a “wiki” but those are tightly written for 100% pure information.

FWIW, I can instantly move whole threads from one forum section to another, and I can move posts between threads but currently only one post at a time so that process isn’t very quick.

People will also get much better responses to questions if they create a new thread with a carefully chosen and descriptive name.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

I would like people to start more topics, to keep discussions on-topic.

Would it be possible and sensible (and I realize this is not a feature one can implement overnight) to introduce the ability for users to create branches of threads from any post?

Currently, the workaround, AFAIK, is that a moderator has to do this or one starts a new thread and manually (in terms of " This thread is a follow up to this and that… ") links it to the original thread. It could be nice to be able to do this more smoothly and also to be able to “drill-up” to predecessor threads when reading “backwards”.

Last Edited by Patrick at 20 Oct 23:25
Hungriger Wolf (EDHF), Germany

Normally, I am quite relaxed, but I also know that a lot of people don’t like – mostly without saying anything openly – some of the things that do happen all the time e.g.

  • massive thread drifts (often I let these go because the discussion remains interesting/informative)
  • borderline (or not so borderline) personal stuff (this I am increasingly removing, though the % is still really really tiny)
  • VFR stuff turning into obscure IFR stuff (I am going to encourage more thread starts)
  • totally boring threads which just go round and round (like the SR22 one; most people find it offputting to read it in an otherwise interesting forum, which is why I won’t just let them run to 1000 posts of which the last 900 are repeats)

I would like people to start more topics, to keep discussions on-topic.

Regarding the SR22 thread, I can’t think of anything which can be said which hasn’t been said. There was ample opportunity to get it back to technical stuff but I think everybody who might have done that just got bored by halfway and disappeared.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Thank you, Aviathor.

We had a discussion recently about restructuring the forum categories. May I suggest a category for Cirrus debates?

Hungriger Wolf (EDHF), Germany
31 Posts
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