Maximum posts in a thread

Been there, done that!

When Jon wrote the interface to the new reflector (this one) for SOTAwatch, the hosts complained that SOTAwatch was hammering their servers trying to maintain an uptodate topic list. He had to slow it down somewhat to keep the hosts happy. That means the topic list can sometimes be a minute or so out of date. I think we can all live with status being a minute or so behind :slight_smile:

Itā€™s never bothered me that the sotawatch lists are a minute or two behind the reflector. I must admit, however, that I find the main discourse reflector list a little ugly or off-putting in some undefinable way, preferring the simpler list in sotawatch.

But, harking back to the topic of sotawatch not knowing me or my callsign or how sotawatch redirects to the reflector: sotawatch of course hasnā€™t a clue as to who i am, so just sends back ā€œopen this topicā€. The reflector, however, DOES know who I am, so could cleverly inspect some cookie (two are available from reflector.sota.org.uk, whether Iā€™m redirected from sotawatch or not - .NET C# has the Request.Cookies collection) to see whether Iā€™m logged in and not only open the topic, but also do the business of locating where I last was in the topic. Or am I missing something simple or profound here?

That only works if a thread stays ā€œon-topicā€. Would you prefer that the forum moderators delete every off-topic post in your pet thread?

As for ignoring it - that only works if you only access the reflector directly, if you access it via sota-watch as many people do then you canā€™t ignore it (or pin/unpin it).

I think by ā€œignoringā€ Mike means ā€œmaking a conscious decision not to open the threadā€.

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I remember Jon saying something about the issue when he got something working but sadly I cannot remember what it was. It may have been that the only solution at the time was to take you to the start of a thread. Possibly it was an API issue on Discourse and that may have been updated since.

I can understand you feeling ā€˜uneasyā€™ regarding the home page. When we first started with Discourse for internal use, I hated it. Particularly the endless scrolling. To someone old and grumpy like me, things do not scroll endlessly, they come in 80(72) character punch cards, or 80x25 screens, or 132x40 screens. This adaptive and endless scrolling is nonsense. But after using it for a while, I came to accept it. There are so many other features that work so well that the scrolling became a non-issue eventually. And, someone else has to keep the server running, patched and the apps updated. That is worth all the tea in China over having to do it ourselves!

I think, Discourse is a Ruby on Rails application but could be mistaken.

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I really donā€™t mind the long running threads. The particular thread in question, I see as a bit of a ā€˜blogā€™ really and I enjoy reading an update every so often. Itā€™s very easy to just ignore the thread if youā€™re not interested.

I am also one of those users who has never really fallen in love with this Discourse reflector. I always start off from SOTAwatch.

My other favourite long thread is the LA1KHA challenge topic, Iā€™m thinking about doing some more PP3 activations, but I guess thereā€™s still a bit of room for a fair number of reports!

Colin

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Thereā€™s a real argument that the Tunnel thread (for lack of a better name) was really about 400 conversations - the conversation would die, then up Gun, Cloud, Shining Tor, Billinge Hill or Great Orme we go again, the usual yet still phenomenal haul of DX received, a few congrats and comments, and then repeat a few days or weeks later. The thread would die and then thereā€™d be another bout of necromancy :slight_smile:

Iā€™d suggest each trip could be a separate thread (or even a blog post linked in) so that in the event people get into the thread in some manner that doesnā€™t preserve previous state, then they see the latest sub section only. As Brian says, threads are cheap :wink:

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Weā€™re definitely (here at least) in that mid-November period of worsening weather but not yet into the Winter Bonus period, if this is a topic that is engaging people to this extent!

I donā€™t think itā€™s even a ā€œthingā€. Discourse has a default limit of 500 posts in a thread. Hit that (if you really need to), then start another thread. There are threads in the vault that exceed 500 posts, but my assumption was that they must have already been that way from the old ā€œin-houseā€ reflector before we migrated everything over to Discourse. My memory could be failing me here though, and it could be as Andy suggests, that the 12m Challenge thread was the one that prompted us to alter the settings.

Anyway, this thread is over 5% of the way to the limit in less than half a day - definitely November!

So far there are more people in favour of shorter threads than longer threads. This suggests that if we alter the limit it should be to something less than 500. Any more opinions?

Discourse is constantly evolving and there are always new features being added and parameters or settings being changed. You only have to follow https://meta.discourse.org/ to see that. I recall that in the early days several settings were static whereas now some seem to be dynamic. Of course being hosted, we only see the new additions and changes when the host updates our platform.

Most threads have veered off course or are repeating by the fifth post so 6 is enough.

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If there has to be a limit eg if Discourse requires a setting to be in place, Iā€™d leave it as it is.

As others have said, starting a new thread is trivial, and gives an opportunity to tweak the title if the discussion has developed in any way.

The search facility is very good, so there is no need to create a logical directory and file structure involving small collections of data for manual sifting :smile:

100 would be my vote. Needs to begin with a 1, and 10 is too low, and 1000 too highā€¦

Are we talking binary here? :smiley:

There are 10 types of peopleā€¦

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ā€¦wondered who would be the first to come up with that oneā€¦

It could have been base 2 we evolved with (indeed computers did), as we have two arms. But it seems the ten fingers trumped that, so base 10 it is.

ā€¦and with this I think we all need to accept that thread hijacks are inevitable.

It was that or the Red Dwarf joke:

ā€œThere is an old Android saying that goesā€¦ā€

:grin:

The word ā€œhijacksā€ suggests that people deliberately, and iniquitously, seek to change the basic topic on which a thread was originally based. But itā€™s my firm belief that this is in fact not the case, but rather that, when posts go ā€œoff topicā€, theyā€™re only reflecting the natural tendency of people to engage in wide-ranging discussions, which some people enjoy and consider healthy, myself included, while others get in a fit about it and rage about hijack. Horses for courses, as alwaysā€¦

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:thumbsup:

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