Long threads

On some forums, threads are locked (by the forum staff) after having a certain amount of replies, and a version 2 of the thread is created. I'm not sure if they have a particular reason for doing this or if it's just for organizational purposes.

What are your thoughts on this policy? Do you have a similar one?

 

Interesting topic. I have some threads that are pretty long and wondered why I should close it and create a new version of it. I'll be waiting to read the responses

 

I hardly ever let threads go beyond 5 pages. The most common reason it takes to damn long to read through everyones replies. The exception to my rule is a link or review thread. On these I modify the first post to highlight each page as they lengthen. So my readers don't have to go through 30 pages of post to find what they want.

 

I just let them go. Can't see a reason to break threads. But then again I set my own view to 50 posts per page so it's a just a bit of a scroll to read a long thread not page by page.

 

I do it on one part of my section. Reason was on my old host, threadss with 1000+ posts were slow and tend to freeze, so we made a version 2. Since then, it just became tradition in one section. My members like it. I do too. It gets creative.

 

Why close a long thread and open another one? Version 2? on the same topic?
And then you have the other kind of admins who merge threads so there aren't two or more threads on the same topic.

Everyone has their own way of doing things, but in my opinion, closing a thread and opening a 'version 2' on the same topic is rather silly. But that's just me.

 

Usually when a post gets very long it's for one of two reasons: Either 1) it's a forum game of some sort, and in that case unless it just kept getting spammed really badly I'd leave it open, or 2) a lot of drama has been going on and two or three members have been fighting it out constantly (again - spam).

Either way, unless they are breaking a rule that I have set, I don't lock threads regardless. Usually even if it is a thread that goes against the rules, it will just be sent to the Purgatory (a "trash" for the staff team to review).

 

I was thinking about this today. Anyone know the downside from a technical point of view of a long thread? Specifically with vb?

How long can a thread get before things don't work well?

 

On one vB forum I know of there's a thread with 6698 pages (167,430 replies) and lots threads with anything from 2000-5000 pages and everything there seems to be going alright, but that is just from a user side though I guess

If my forum ever gets big and has huge threads, I don't think I'd split them up.

 

Ok... I just searched vb too. It seems to be a performance issue with the hardware.

I'll leave the thread open I'm thinking about with 2000 replies for another year then check back. : )

 

It seems that long threads can sometimes cause performance issues. We have one with a bit over 82K replies and no one has complained, so we just let it go.

 

Those long threads would seem to be a problem only on the mysql side. A db that is on a shared might not fare so well relative to a standalone. A resource issue and hardware as Abomination mentions.

I only see a long thread being a problem if it deteriorates among people. That's worth a close to me and not starting a v2 of it...lol

 

Nope, I dislike it when forums do this.