The General Discussion has become a newswire forum!
Is that a last ditch attempt to avoid bankruptcy? Is it just someone’s crazy idea?
How about a new forum called Newswires? Such would be added to the list of General Discussion, Locomotives, Transit, etc.
The way things are going now when someone starts a new thread it soon will start on Page 6.
I’m happy with looking at Newswire itself–though every now and then it asks me to log in again despite my continuing request to stay logged in.
It’s a great idea…get those breaking news type postings in it’s own category. It would clean things up quite a bit. Derailments, accidents, endless banter about speculation on these things should be in it’s own section.
Yikes! What you just described would have to be called the bucyrus/euclid forum.[:-^]
I see it as someone’s marketing idea to get more hits on the newswire page. I can’t blame them, but I feel the effort is a bit misguided. The answer, is to not pin the threads at the top of the page. That’s what pushes threads off page one in a hurry.
A few years back we lobbied for and got the number of threads on each page upped from 15 to 30. That was to prevent the thread slide to page 2 that you mention. At this moment, thread #15 on this page was last posted to 12 hours ago. Thread #30 was last posted to 79 hours ago. Not pinning the newswire threads would allow them to sink or swim depending on the interest of the forum members- just like every other thread.
Murphy S.; Shame on you! [:-
Bringin’ a slingshot to a gun fight! [swg]
I, for one, don’t mind the way things are (or at least understand).
You have to be a Trains subscriber to access the Newswire, but someone thinks these articles (not by any means all of the articles that appear) are worth seeing by the non-subscribing audience (are there really that many forum members who don’t also have a subscription any more?).
How about this: “sticky” the articles when they appear, then un-sticky them after only a day or two (at the same time as new articles are posted). I suspect that they won’t sink to the bottom of the page as quickly as the photo contest stickies do! If the modrator is paying attention, he could probably combine the newswire article with any other Forum threads that cover the same article; that would also make the thread count a little lower and keep the worthy threads higher up on the Forum after they’re “un-stickied”.
I would like to see that applied to the forums as well. Many other sites require you to be a subscriber to participate in their forums, why doesn’t Trains? Subscribers to any of Kalmbach’s rail related magazines should be allowed on any of their forums. That would eliminate some of the trolls or at least force them to pay their fair share. No pay, no play.
I had not noticed the number of “sticky’s” because I always click on the “Unread Topics” tab above the list of threads and only ever see just a few entries. I only see the Stickys when they are new or someone replies to them… just like all the other threads.
After I have read the new threads/replies I am interested in, I refresh the list (in case there is a new one or two while I was reading the others) then I click the “Mark All as Read” button and that clears the list to zero entries (Sticky or not).
When I want to reply to some much older thread (such as adding to my Roundhouses and Turntables thread), it is often on page 2 or 3 or 4 anyway, regardless of the number of Stickys pinned to the top of the list, so I am used to searching through the long list anyway.
It might be a marketing idea. Or it might be some other kind of idea. I suspect the idea is about this fo
Picture Indiana Jones and the man who brought a scimitar to a gunfight.[:-,]
That a topic originated with a Newswire item does NOT make it a sticky. In fact most of the time it makes it less appropriate as a topic - I for one care about the topic, not its source within Kalmbach, and the proliferation of what are basically admin-only stickies is beginning to really annoy me as their ‘last post’ times get later and later while legitimate hot topics get shoved down, particularly on portable devices.
A Newswire thread should be posted like any other topic, and stand and fall only on its relevance to this community.
Or yes, put it in its own forum, below ‘passenger’ but above the languishing railfan-guide section, so trendiness doesn’t interfere with interesting discussion if there ‘have’ to be stickies…
Maybe that is the purpose. That is, to tamp down the hot topics so their passion does not begin to threaten the peace.
I wouldn’t be here then. I suspect several other rails wouldn’t either. I really don’t want a subscription to a magazine when I do this stuff for a living. Besides, there usually is an issue floating around the office if I really get bored.
And many of the newswire subjects show up on our RSS/email feeds at work.
If so, it won’t work. If anything, it will just make hotheads even more annoyed by the time they start to post…
I’dI’d frankly be more concerned that many of these Newswire topics are precisely the kind of bait that tends to lead to controversial or the wrong sort of ‘hot topic’ thread development.
Perhaps it would suffice to have the new newswire topics all on one thread. Every time someone responded or a new newswire item was posted, the thread would come back to the top just like every other thread on the forum. There are several ongoing threads that do just that. One of them has over a million views and it works fine.
I think it’s OK as it is. If anything reduce the number of categories. We get posts regularly in the general section that should be in one of the specific sections.
As for stickiness, I was wondering if maybe a moderator’s post defaults to sticky?
Edit: OK, I see now that it’s newswire articles that stick; I don’t know why I hadn’t made the connection. I vote for just leaving them slippery like other posts.
That would certainly work, along the lines of an old radio feature I broadcast in college called “From United Press International … WE think it’s news”.
A thread called “From the Newswire” that actually provided a working link to otherwise-blocked content, or that synopsized a blocked item rather than just providing a link that nonsubscribers can’t access, would be of tremendous value. And I wouldn’t complain if it were kept ‘sticky’ … as long as Brian or someone like him kept it reasonably current with new live topics.
That is certainly the alternative that requires the least consternation, and the least tech programming…
I agree, things are fine as they are. And I don’t really see a problem with trolls on here, Raymond is the closest thing to one we have and I usually get a laugh out of his kookier postings, and then go back to ignoring him (you know, the old addage about not feeding them).
Good threads seem to die when they get moved out of the General tab …