On multiple threads with the same "subject"

Tuism

I wanna ask everyone this. There's a few projects which have multiple threads that could easily (in my personal view) be made in the original game thread, but have been made their own thread.

My feeling is, unless the new thread is doing something pretty different (here is the post mortem, here are lessons we learned from doing this on this, that on that, etc) and offer value on their own, they should rather have been made in their parent project threads.

So I'm just questioning this, what does everyone else think about the treatment of things like this?

It's also better (for a game) to have a bulkier thread than a couple disparate threads with fewer engagements, I think.

raxter

Is it maybe an issue of people wanting the top of the thread to reflect their latest development iteration? I know that you can simply edit it to reflect your latest version of your game, say, but if anyone has made multiple posts on the same project, is that perhaps the issue? I know it's something I've wondered about as I'm building up to a release of my project. I want to keep it all localized but I don't want people put off by the old news and old screenshots at the top of the thread.

I'm not too sure, if the poster wants to post multiple threads and they are not spamming the forums then they take the risks (and rewards) associated with that, no? Unless there is wider reaching consequence to the general community that I'm not seeing?

Maybe there would be some novel way of grouping relevant threads? It's not traditional forum mechanics I don't think (I don't forum much) so donno if this is a good idea at all (maybe it's been done and is old hat): but the OP can link their posts together (or two OP's can agree to link their posts) and linked posts appear as a "relevant posts" list somewhere in the post... kinda like posts becoming facebook friends :p

Of course this wouldn't stop anyone potentially abusing the forums by spam posting their topic but I don't think we have anything like that going on here and that would be a moderator job to fix if it did.

quintond

Well I have created two threads for Re-Spawn, one was focused on the initial discussion and the second thread is regarding my Distributed UI system. They both have to do with Re-Spawn but as far as I was concerned they were ultimately separate subjects and hence warranted the separate threads.

I guess if you want to "police" this, you may have to create some set of forum rules with this ... just remember however that you want to create a community and not come off as a bunch of "d***s" to other potential community members.

Tuism

Well I'm not saying that it's right or wrong, I'm saying I've noticed it and I want to know what other people think about it. I personally would stick things together and get one bulky thread which gives better impressions and prevents people from having to check multiple locations for the same subject matter, but that's me. I'm not prescribing, nor am I saying WE MUST RULE THIS THIS WAY GARRRRREWRWEGGHH :)

DrDeth

I prefer multiple threads. If you go to an updated discussion, it takes you to the first unread post, so if you're changed your original post with new info, I'll never know... or wont care because it takes too long for me to get there, then jump back to try and make sense of the NEW discussion... urgh!

BUT... I understand the question. I think the 'Projects' section should have a single post per project, and additional threads in a different section (General?) which you can then lift to from the Projects section. Seems like a lot of work?

mattbenic

I for one far prefer one thread per project. I understand that it's a bit of extra work for the OP to update the original post with new details, and then post an "original post updated with foo" message, but it means that there's always a consistent place to find the latest info on a given project. It also makes it possible to * a project thread and know you'll never miss an update and easily be able to jump to the latest stuff.

We're a rapidly growing community, with tons of new projects popping up all the time (which is awesome), and multiple threads per project just gets noisy.

raxter said:

I'm not too sure, if the poster wants to post multiple threads and they are not spamming the forums then they take the risks (and rewards) associated with that, no? Unless there is wider reaching consequence to the general community that I'm not seeing?

By conforming to a single way of doing something (first post updating, specifically), it just makes it easier for everyone in the community to jump in and start getting involved in the discussion around a project, or even just try it out, without wading through multiple posts or multiple pages.

TL;DR The single thread, updated first approach works and is widely understood. Pretty please stick to it :)

Kobusvdwalt9

I like the one thread per game way of doing things. And you can also just put a link in a post that takes you to the top as far as I am concerned check this out : http://makegamessa.com/discussion/1822/on-multiple-threads-with-the-same-subject#Item_2 it takes you to raxter's post.