Not trying to be a nudge, but I still don't understand the answer to the above question. Is there a techie reason why it's bad to post multiple threads here at The Cellar?

It's called the signal to noise ratio.

You can post 40 times/day with no problem, as long as they're mostly replies. Creating many new threads in a day doesn't give weight to anything, floods the main boards, and pushes out active conversation. There is no techie reason why you can't, but it tends to look like spam on a vB board.

I find it actually pretty difficult to explain, but I guess I could say that it would be like browsing through the stacks at the library and finding slips of paper with text scratched on them scattered amoungst the novels. There are a lot of threads, here, that invite short replies (go check out Guess What It Is) but the boards, themselves, get difficult to sift through with lots of new threads. The threads are intended to carry over many days with the conversation going on inside rather than conversation being carried on in the form of new threads.

...and now I'm just trying to sound like I actually know what I'm talking about, so I'm going to shut up, slink off to find coffee, and maybe try my hand at working while in the office for once.

Work? Damn! This feels strange!

quick question @all: won't "bad" threads drop off the page automatically, if ignored? (I mean, not posted on)

Nope. One thread can get 2,000 replies and be very popular while 20 threads with 0 replies will push it off. The opposite is true.

@Kitsune: Right, but when the zero replies are recieved, each reply on the other thread will push it back up, a "bump" - isn't this a democratic process for "voting" on which threads are "good" and which are "bad"? I understand that new threads are initially at the top. (btw I still don't know what "saging" is)

Democratic? All it takes is one reply, and it's back to the top. They're ordered by most recent, not most popular. That's how a ton of nothing threads can keep the good ones down, especially if new ones keep being generated.

Yeah, or earlier less-successful attempts.

@Happy Monkey: I understand what you're saying, and maybe I'm just splitting hairs here, but, statistically speaking, the threads that "nobody" likes will be replaced by the theads that are active. One reply, one "vote" at a time, the board will take the shape of what the people who are actually posting there want it to be. This isn't a deliberate process, it's an automatic occurance.

I'd agree if the general layout encouraged it, but that doesn't seem to be how it works on the vB boards I've been on. Starting a plethora of threads on a scroll-style board has always been accepted while it generally gets viewed as spam on vB-style systems. Here, threads tend to appear in sparse numbers. If you scroll through the history of the board, you'll notice the pattern.

I couldn't explain on a technical level why the interface seems to encourage the post style it does, but it seems to work that way at most places like this and I tend to think that this is what the system was designed to accommodate. New threads are few, posts tend to run relatively long, and more time is invested in the content. I don't doubt that the community has a great deal of influence, too, but I just don't see scroll-style content on most vB/phpBB boards.

I can't say you're free to do as you wish here (I don't run this place, or any other), but I can say that creating a high number of threads in a short period of time is generally viewed as spam because it isn't what people expect. If that's your thing, I suppose you can do it, but I'm not sure you should expect the warmest reception.

As for SAGEing, I was once on an image board running Wakachan (mostly used for image posts, namely anime artwork) that recognized "SAGE" as the opposite of "BUMP" -- it would actively push the thread down in the list if people didn't approve of it, allowing for a vote. Digg uses thumbs-up/down to push comments down.

hahaha @ SAGEing! hahahaha! that is classic! We needed that at AG, just for laughs.

@Kitsune: Again, splitting hairs here, but isn't this a "scroll style" board? If not, why not? New posts and responded posts go to the top, unresponded posts sink to the bottom. Is that not "scrolling" or am I missing something?

I was going to ask the same thing. This seems like a scroll style board to me.

I think Kit is being very helpful and patient with us. Thank God for someone that answers questions from newbies. Sorry if it's interfering with work (but isn't that what message boards do?)

It was actually really useful, as threads that were inappropriate or didn't meet the subject of the board didn't last long. The entire place could police itself fairly well just by what the users bumped/saged. If spam was posted, there were plenty of times you never even saw it -- the stuff was gone in the blink of an eye because it would be attacked. One problem with that, however, is that controversial topics would get burried by a couple people that opposed the discussion. Democracy, at least on that board, didn't encourage discussion very well. It was great for art and photographs, though.

Hell, I'm at work right now too. So is Steve. :::cha-ching::: ha ha ha