Lootman wrote:Gengulphus wrote:So any idea that new boards on the basis that that preference should settle the question is an extremely one-dimensional argument.
It was Clariman who stated that TLF would have far fewer boards than TMF. If you think he is being "one dimensional" then I suggest that you tell him, not me.
Since he left 69+ boards, not just one, clearly he didn't think that "fewer boards" should be enough to settle such questions. So no, I don't think Clariman is being "one dimensional". And by the way, I'm telling everybody who is reading this thread, including Clariman, not just you.
Lootman wrote:Gengulphus wrote:I'm not entirely certain of what all TLF's other preferences are, but I'm fairly certain they include:
2) Not to present people with a board structure that requires them to sift their way through vast numbers of threads they consider uninteresting to find the ones they consider interesting. Some such sifting will be required, of course - there's no way a board structure can be made ideal for every user. But too much will be a serious deterrent to using the boards - most users will have a point at which the signal-to-noise ratio has dropped so low that they reckon it's a waste of time even looking.
We have had this debate before and all I can do is repeat the observation that I am at a loss to understand why you struggle cognitively to ignore topics that do not interest you. ...
I think I'll answer that by analogy: if I said that garden owners with lawns can have problems with molehills, and that too many molehills can be a real problem, would you decide that I struggle physically with clearing molehills? If so, you'd be making at least two unwarranted assumptions from what I'd said, namely that I am a gardener with a lawn, and that I am currently encountering too many molehills for me.
Lootman wrote:... And I say that because I find that a trivially easy task. Presumably I use a different method of reading the site than you do, as I am certainly not going to claim that you lack that ability. But it just seems very odd to me that you cannot scan a list of topics and pick out the odd one that interests you. I do that every day with barely any conscious effort.
I can and do have a mostly-trivial-effort way of ignoring stuff that doesn't interest me. Specifically, my method has three components:
A) I subscribe to boards whose threads (*) are reasonably likely to interest me
and not to contain lots of material that I find I need to skim over. Both of those are important: for instance, I don't subscribe to the Sports Bar because I'm very unlikely to be interested in threads about sports, and I don't subscribe to Polite Discussions because although I am often interested in the subjects discussed there, I would find myself having to skim huge amounts of what's posted there - and would probably inadvertently miss a fair amount of the ~5% that does really interest me by doing the skimming too casually. So I simply use other sources than TLF to satisfy my interest in Polite Discussions subjects.
Or very occasionally, I decide that I do want to see something that's likely to be on a board I'm not subscribed to, so go in and actively seek it out. That and the occasional decision about whether to be subscribed to a board or not are the only conscious effort required.
B) I have my notification options set to notify me about new threads on the boards I'm subscribed to. When I deal with such a notification (and they're a big majority of the notifications I get sent to me), I click it (needed to mark the notification as read), take a quick look at the thread to decide whether I'm interested, and if not, move on to the next notification. The thread will never come to my attention again, unless someone specifically draws it to my attention. Very little effort, but a bit (and it becomes a bit more if I get more than 10 notifications behind, which is a large part of the reason why I'm not set up to get many notifications), and the cumulative effect of all those bits of effort could become annoying if there were too many of them
If the thread is of interest to me, I bookmark it to put it on my reading list, and I will usually eventually un-bookmark it when I think it's of no further interest to me, or has run its course and of no lasting interest. As a general rule, somewhere between 25% and 75% of the new threads on the boards I am subscribed to are quickly dropped, while the rest are bookmarked and the vast majority of those eventually un-bookmarked. A very few remain bookmarked indefinitely, basically because I know I'm going to want to find them again.
C) If a thread contains material that I'm not interested in, I try to skim it just enough to see that that's what it is and move past it. That's a bit more effort than simply un-bookmarking the thread and never looking at it again, but not too difficult and I'll do it in preference to giving up entirely on the thread by un-bookmarking it as long as I think there's a reasonable hope of getting enough further stuff that is of interest to me to justify the extra effort.
(*) Just to be clear, I personally try to avoid the word "topic" in this sort of discussion because although it is phpBB's term for them, I feel it is potentially confusing when used in discussions about what boards ought to be about - I think talk about a board's subject and its threads is much less likely to be misunderstood than talk about its topic and its topics... I do my best to take others' uses of "topic" as they intend, but I don't guarantee to succeed!
Lootman wrote:Having an individual topic invaded by extraneous commentary can be a burden. But a diversity of topics within a board is not a problem at all in my view. (Although a meaningful title certainly helps).
Exactly - extraneous commentary is the source of the main problems. I can ignore it, but skimming is more extra effort than the other methods of ignoring stuff, and too much of it can become burdensome.
In addition, I have problems with threads 'drifting' from their original subject that are quite independent of whether
I am ignoring them. If I'm interested in the original subject of the thread, and others still potentially have things to say about it but start ignoring the thread because skimming for stuff about the original subject has become too burdensome for them, I consider that a problem.
And as another example, suppose that some way into a thread about a specific company on HYP Practical, someone posts about its free cash flow and someone else responds to ask "what is this 'free cash flow' you're talking about? how do you calculate it? what is and isn't it useful for?". How well the dividend is covered by free cash flow is certainly on-topic for the board, being a very plausible indicator of the safety of the dividend, and I don't think that one can reasonably say that explanations of what something on-topic that's been said is about should be off-topic. But some way into a thread about a single company on a board about a fairly narrowly-defined set of strategies is a long way from being the ideal place to get such an explanation: the person asking for such explanations would do better to ask them in a separate thread on HYP Practical to have a better chance of betting clear answers because they're not going to be ignored by those who aren't interested in that particular company, and better still to ask in a separate thread on a board that also isn't going to be ignored by those not interested in HYP strategies. And for both of those, if similar questions are asked later, there's a better chance of people being able to find the previous answers and refer to them.
Lootman wrote:Gengulphus wrote:How does this balance out? I'm uncertain, mainly because I don't know the answer about 1) above. I think that needs a poll directed at getting responses about whether and how people would use it, and that poll needs to be about a reasonably specific proposal, ideally board name (fairly succinct), subtitle (for a reminder/explanation of a bit more detail) and guidance (to make it clear what the board is for and just how it affects other boards - hopefully just providing a better home for some poorly-fitting material IMHO).
And even with the results of such a poll, my view about how it all balances out won't ultimately matter - what will resolve the question is how it, together with any other considerations they have, balance out in stooz's and Clariman's minds, not mine.
Now here I agree. Except that I don't think we need yet another poll on board structures. The over-riding factor has to be the risk and workload for the volunteers who kindly provide this site. And if that means fewer boards with broader remits because experience tells the site sponsors that means less moderation and intervention is needed, then so be it. And if that means Lemons have to develop better sifting skills, then so be that as well. I'd be happy to teach my techniques for that not being a problem.
Again, neither your opinion on that nor mine ultimately count - it's not a question of whether we feel we need the type of poll I'm suggesting, but one of whether stooz and Clariman feel such a poll would be helpful input to the decision. If I were in their position, I would consider a poll about whether people are likely to use the proposed board (and if so how) to be helpful input, so I'm suggesting it - after a bit more work to clarify exactly what is being proposed, since this thread has exposed various interpretations of it.
Finally, an offer: I'm willing to try to help with an effort to produce some reasonably clear guidance for a new board and a poll about how much use it would get, but only if Clariman would find it helpful (a question only he can answer) and if it can be done
constructively. That is, I'm willing to attempt it on the basis that we're trying to come up with the best proposal for a new board that we can, and some evidence about whether it would attract enough interest, and that the question of whether we actually have it or not is to be settled afterwards and out of order during it. On the other hand, if it's just going to be bombarded with repetitions and continuations of the arguments in this thread, I'm afraid I'm not willing to spend any more time on them: I've stated my position and my reasons for it in great detail (probably too much for some!) and anything more would just be pointless repetition.
Gengulphus
. Can we focus on the question ref my 3 options (see above)....
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