Can we go back to a perpetual miscellaneous SoapBox thread?

[Aurich]

I'm happy to make some exceptions for a handful of specific threads that people would like to not get dragged too far off topic, but in general the mods are not the topic police and "stay on topic" is not a forum rule.

If anything these misc catch all threads are really horrible for being able to discuss anything because they're built to constantly interrupt everything with a complete tangent.

 

[MichaelC]

Am I the only person who filters for fora I want to read?

I originally came to Ars because I was in IT. I have not been in IT in several years now so I no longer look at the technical fora. Oh. I also exclude (or rather, do not include) the soap box because...gah!

So I see threads with new posts, including new threads, from the fora that interest me. I am not reading every thread in those but I see no need to filter further because if I am interested in a thread but have not posted to it, I can still see when it updates or I can choose to specifically watch it.

I was not even watching this thread, but replies to it meant I kept seeing it pop up near the top of the list.

If I only look at watched threads or threads with my posts, I am going to miss quite a lot.

 

[Aurich]

Am I the only person who filters for fora I want to read?

I originally came to Ars because I was in IT. I have not been in IT in several years now so I no longer look at the technical fora. Oh. I also exclude (or rather, do not include) the soap box because...gah!

So I see threads with new posts, including new threads, from the fora that interest me. I am not reading every thread in those but I see no need to filter further because if I am interested in a thread but have not posted to it, I can still see when it updates or I can choose to specifically watch it.

I was not even watching this thread, but replies to it meant I kept seeing it pop up near the top of the list.

If I only look at watched threads or threads with my posts, I am going to miss quite a lot.

This is why I'm trying to understand if there's some technical barrier to just looking at what interests people.

If there's a fix we can apply I'm happy to look into it.

I can't fix "I don't want to look at anything but what I've already posted in".

 

[UserIDAlreadyInUse]

I'm just one person, and I'm relatively new to the forums; I spent about ten years on the front page before even really looking at them. Even then I spent about six months reading and trying to get a feel for the flow of the conversation and work up some courage before making my first real post.

I get shy about creating new threads because it seems - to me, at least - that just about every topic is pretty much covered under a current perpetual thread. There's a new show to watch? There's already a TV thread going. I got a new kitten? Cat thread. Cat shredded my data disk? Mild Annoyance thread. Saw a new movie? The "What did you watch?" thread. And so on.

New threads tend to die quick in favour of the long-established ones. Not always - new threads will sometimes turn into their own perpetual threads - but often. And so I, at least, go to where the conversation is happening.

The perpetual threads are kind of like the Cheers bar. They're relaxed, they wander all over, and everybody knows your name there. Which in turn makes it so hard to join them or start new ones, as who wants to be that person who walks up, pulls out a seat, sits at the table, and joins in uninvited or interrupts a long-running conversation between old friends?

 

[Aurich]

I'm just one person, and I'm relatively new to the forums; I spent about ten years on the front page before even really looking at them. Even then I spent about six months reading and trying to get a feel for the flow of the conversation and work up some courage before making my first real post.

I get shy about creating new threads because it seems - to me, at least - that just about every topic is pretty much covered under a current perpetual thread. There's a new show to watch? There's already a TV thread going. I got a new kitten? Cat thread. Cat shredded my data disk? Mild Annoyance thread. Saw a new movie? The "What did you watch?" thread. And so on.

New threads tend to die quick in favour of the long-established ones. Not always - new threads will sometimes turn into their own perpetual threads - but often. And so I, at least, go to where the conversation is happening.

The perpetual threads are kind of like the Cheers bar. They're relaxed, they wander all over, and everybody knows your name there. Which in turn makes it so hard to join them or start new ones, as who wants to be that person who walks up, pulls out a seat, sits at the table, and joins in uninvited or interrupts a long-running conversation between old friends?

Yeah, this is what's bothering me.

It feels like the perpetual threads are actually suppressing people.

I would 100% rather you start a new TV show thread to discuss how you got hooked on Miss Scarlet and the Duke than feel like it belongs in some catch all where it's going to quickly get lost amongst fans of Lower Decks or whatever.

 

[SportivoA]

It feels like the perpetual threads are actually suppressing people.

It seems this complaint is rooted in an expectation that forum life is complete using just Threads with your posts and Watched on tap. I certainly don't think hitting New Posts or browsing a specific fora for topics to read is too much. Setting aside front page comments, can you see what volume of posts are in >1 year old, >10 page topics? Unfortunately, eliciting a culture change to have frequent users look beyond their prior contributions is a steep ask and probably would not be helped by simultaneously knocking off a bunch of long-running threads, even if that would flush out some users.

 

[Aurich]

I'm not trying to punish people, and I can't force things.

But if there was an easier way to view the threads you wanted to see for instance, I would be happy to see if we could make that happen.

 

[CuriouslySane]

Got it.

I dunno how to help you honestly. If there's some kind of feedback we can take into account I'm happy to hear it, but "I don't want to look at the forums, just a handful of old threads I've already seen and watched" doesn't give me much to work with.

You don't need to help at all, just not break something that isn't broken. Nothing is preventing topic breakouts, and if people wanted more of it that would be happening organically.

 

[Chris FOM]

This is literally asking mods to be the topic police, because you have now made it our job to read every single post in every single thread to determine whether or not it should be split off into a new topic, and then telling people to take the discussion to a new topic.

No, thank-you. Nowhere is it even remotely a moderator’s job to do that, and we don’t want it to be.

Either I’m explaining my idea really badly or, not being a mod, it’s simply vastly more work than I realize. Either way I’ll try one more time to explain my thoughts then let it go. Basically just with perpetual threads, since those specifically have been noted to vacuum up so much discussion (see UserIDAlreadyInUse’s post about his experience with The Lounge), if a topic seems to be leading to some sustained discussion, maybe the mods could have a lower threshold to split it off and then drop a post in the original perpetual thread saying they did it. I’m also assuming mods already disproportionately keep an eye on those threads anyway since they’re high-volume and freewheeling in terms of topics, so it wouldn’t even entail much additional active supervision (another area I could well be wrong). This thread Horatio split off from the BF misc thread, along with this post announcing it is a perfect example of what I’m thinking of.

Nothing more aggressive or formalized than that. Not topic policing every post in every thread, no more thought involved than “this specific topic seems to be generating a sustained conversation,” and it’s no big deal if a potential split gets passed up. Just take something that’s already done sometimes and consider doing it more often.

 

[MichaelC]

I feel like we're reasonably good about starting new threads in the lounge even with perpetual threads. New movies and shows for example. We have threads for The Last of Us, Pluribus, Fallout, and others. And Danger Mouse recently started his movie review thread for new movies. Which I felt allowed people to discuss new movies more freely than they might in the Things you just watched... thread. But it is not, or should not, keep people from posting threads about specific movies. For example, there is a Project Hail Mary thread right now.

In fact, I get a little dismayed when people post about a series in one of the perpetual threads. Like Starfleet Academy in the Star Trek thread. That has enough interest to warrant its own thread. There is very little going on in the perpetual thread except talk about that show.

But yea, I do think perpetual threads can inhibit new thread creation. I never rarely let them stop me, but I have seen others post their uncertainty, and on a rare occasion someone scold someone else for starting a new thread when there is a perpetual thread. That is disheartening.

I am not certain, but I believe the Lounge's Random thoughts thread (thread line, this is the third, fourth? iteration) is perhaps the oldest. It is useful for non-sequiturs... which I do a lot of... and for random thoughts, and short topics. GESC's random thoughts thread came later. But I do recall the Star Trek thread was created in response to posters going a little nuts with new star trek threads in a short period of time. So the perpetual thread was kind of a knee jerk reaction to something that would have calmed down on its own anyway. I remember when this happened. People were just being kind of silly about making new threads. To be fair, they were all on different subjects, but there were quite a lot at the time. It was akin to the chilipocalypse, but nobody created a perpetual chili thread in response.

Some perpetual threads are pretty useful. The What are you Listening to now thread is pretty good at bringing new music to people, or to remind people of music they may have forgotten, or even to showcase specific interesting performances of familiar music. I think the What did you eat last night thread provides a similar good use. Lots of people are like "oh, could you share that recipe?" or "I do something similar, here's mine!" Arians are cooking up a lot of great dishes and inspiring others.

But on the whole, I would not mind seeing a few perpetual threads end, and having people create new threads on specific topics. And I would prefer people not do the "we had a thread on this... 5 years ago" ok, well someone either was not here then or was unaware or just wants to have a new conversation about it. Let them. That's how conversation works.

 

[SunRaven01]

Nothing more aggressive or formalized than that. Not topic policing every post in every thread, no more thought involved than “this specific topic seems to be generating a sustained conversation,” and it’s no big deal if a potential split gets passed up. Just take something that’s already done sometimes and consider doing it more often.

If it’s really not that big a deal then … why can’t you do that? Why is it that you think this is perfectly reasonable to ask a moderator to do, instead of just … doing it yourself?

 

[Aurich]

It would just be neat to see if with a little encouragement we could have a slightly higher level of new active threads, and if that would be nice.

Maybe it's not gonna happen. I'm inclined to think about it and maybe try some things before surrendering to another dump it all perpetual thread.

If there are things that would be helpful to people to participate in that kind of a system more I'm all ears.

 

[Skoop]

if a topic seems to be leading to some sustained discussion, maybe the mods could have a lower threshold to split it off and then drop a post in the original perpetual thread saying they did it.

There is the Miscellaneous thread in the Boardroom, essentially a perpetual thread. Indeed, on occasion, someone brings up something that starts to get legs.

When that happens, I remind the readers that a Misc thread is for one-offs and anecdotes and that the current topic would warrant its own thread. Please feel free.

Sometimes one happens, sometimes it just moves on to something else. But I'm sure as hell not going to be the dad and break a few posts out into a new thread on my own initiative. I think that that would totally stifle any motivation for the regulars to do so unbidden.

Chris, what you're suggesting is tantamount to effecting the opposite of what you're hoping would happen.

 

[Chris FOM]

If it’s really not that big a deal then … why can’t you do that? Why is it that you think this is perfectly reasonable to ask a moderator to do, instead of just … doing it yourself?

Because only mods can split posts off into new threads. For the BF thread I linked above, Horatio took a bunch of posts from the miscellaneous thread and split them off into a new one; they weren’t created after he himself started a new thread. That meant nobody had to write an opening post (which really can be quite a hurdle all by itself, I’ve often spent well over an hour crafting an OP that I thought would generate discussion) and the new thread automatically populated into a bunch of people’s “Threads with your posts” page. Having the thread start fully formed, complete with participants, really does meaningfully lower the amount of work and inertia needed to get a new one going.

 

[SarahSparkles]

Because only mods can split posts off into new threads. For the BF thread I linked above, Horatio took a bunch of posts from the miscellaneous thread and split them off into a new one; they weren’t created after he himself started a new thread. That meant nobody had to write an opening post (which really can be quite a hurdle all by itself, I’ve often spent well over an hour crafting an OP that I thought would generate discussion) and the new thread automatically populated into a bunch of people’s “Threads with your posts” page. Having the thread start fully formed, complete with participants, really does meaningfully lower the amount of work and inertia needed to get a new one going.

I don't think what you're suggesting is a bad idea conceptually, like, I think we get the thinking behind it.

It sounds reasonable, but what really needs to go into it just isn't logistically practical in any meaningful way.

And that's not even taking into account whether it's really a beneficial thing for the forum in the long run.

 

[Chris FOM]

There is the Miscellaneous thread in the Boardroom, essentially a perpetual thread. Indeed, on occasion, someone brings up something that starts to get legs.

When that happens, I remind the readers that a Misc thread is for one-offs and anecdotes and that the current topic would warrant its own thread. Please feel free.

Sometimes one happens, sometimes it just moves on to something else. But I'm sure as hell not going to be the dad and break a few posts out into a new thread on my own initiative. I think that that would totally stifle any motivation for the regulars to do so unbidden.

Chris, what you're suggesting is tantamount to effecting the opposite of what you're hoping would happen.

I don't think what you're suggesting is a bad idea conceptually, like, I think we get the thinking behind it.

It sounds reasonable, but what really needs to go into it just isn't logistically practical in any meaningful way.

And that's not even taking into account whether it's really a beneficial thing for the forum in the long run.

For me it’s just an idea while you two both have clear and practical understanding of what it would take to actually put it into practice. So I will happily defer to you and let this one go.

 

[SarahSparkles]

I never really thought like there was a need to constantly lock the thread but now its not even on a predictable schedule. I feel like this is hindering discussion more than enabling it

Thanks for your feedback. I don't have much to add to the broader picture that hasn't already been expressed by Aurich, but I do hear you.

For the foreseeable future, there will continue to be a current events thread with an end date. As you're aware, there's been some testing on extending the end dates out longer than a week.

Whether there's space for something else as well, I think we're trying to stay open.

I think it's also worth considering that while some express that they like perpetual threads, there are others who do not feel the same way. And so it's nice to have a variety of different thread types that can appeal to different people.

 

[Aurich]

As I said earlier, all I really care about is that people are finding the forum a useful place to be, interacting with it, and keeping the community alive. How that happens is less important to me than just making sure it keeps happening.

It's hard to keep a forum alive and vibrant in 2026, despite them feeling more urgent and vital than ever. It's somewhat vexing tbh.

I don't wish to 'break things' or be pig headed about telling people no. I'm also inclined to keep teasing things out.

On more than one occasion I have had a thought or idea that I thought would be good and been proven wrong by how people did or did not use it. That's just how it goes, we can only try things. Sometimes the ideas are good!

My process is to think out loud in these conversations, because I like to be transparent and give people information, and I find the feedback can be helpful. It's giving me thoughts about where pain points might be, and how we could consider them.

But what I'm hearing in general from this thread and my other interactions on similar topics are:

1) Some people often find starting new threads intimidating or more friction than it feels worthwhile to push past, and are much more comfortable with someone else doing it or having an existing place to drop things

2) Some people find content discovery or keeping up with new content to be burdensome and prefer to have familiar access points deliver new posts without extra effort

3) For all the convenience that perpetual threads offer as a solution to the above points they can also feel stifling and have their own bit of insider gatekeeping vibe

I think if you group those ideas there are some possible avenues of exploration.

 

[SunRaven01]

Because only mods can split posts off into new threads. For the BF thread I linked above, Horatio took a bunch of posts from the miscellaneous thread and split them off into a new one; they weren’t created after he himself started a new thread. That meant nobody had to write an opening post (which really can be quite a hurdle all by itself, I’ve often spent well over an hour crafting an OP that I thought would generate discussion) and the new thread automatically populated into a bunch of people’s “Threads with your posts” page. Having the thread start fully formed, complete with participants, really does meaningfully lower the amount of work and inertia needed to get a new one going.

But a regular user is perfectly capable of scrolling up to the top of the page, clicking new thread, starting a new thread, and then going back to the old thread and saying “Hey! I started a new thread about this!”

If that’s too much labor for you to do, then why do you keep insisting it’s really NBD for the unpaid, volunteer moderators to do that BUT in every one of the two dozen active and perpetual threads in the SB… EVERY DAY. You’re saying we need to be in every one of those threads, every day, so we can just serendipitously notice that a discussion needs to be split off.

 

[dferrantino]

not being a mod, it’s simply vastly more work than I realize

In short, this. In order for this to happen, we either need to be constantly monitoring every thread in our boards or you would need to put in the request and tell us exactly which posts need to be split out. In the former case, absolutely fucking not, and in the latter, if you've already done that work to tell us which threads to split out, it's literally one extra step to just quote them and add them to the OP of your new thread.

Your request is completely unreasonable.

 

[UserIDAlreadyInUse]

From reading Chris FOM's posts, I got more the impression - and please don't spear me! - was that he was trying to describe The Wall; the unspoken barriers that discourage people - for whatever their reasons - from creating new threads, and was only trying to give an example of how starting new threads might be normalized in the short term before people started picking it up and doing it on their own.

I am not advocating for this to be taken on by the mod squad, so again, no spearing, please! Only giving my own view on what I was reading there.

I kind of get what he means, too. For me, starting a thread tends to feel like I now own that thread, and am responsible for the care and feeding of it, and interacting with the people in it, making sure their soft drinks are topped up and there's still food on the table in case anyone wants it just because my name's on the title and my post is first. That's not an explicit expectation, more like it's just kind of cultural these days. I think Chris was just giving an example of how such a cultural shift could happen without necessarily advocating that that was how it had to happen.

 

[Nauls]

2) Some people find content discovery or keeping up with new content to be burdensome and prefer to have familiar access points deliver new posts without extra effort

The contributed threads page is my landing point on Ars, like many others I’m sure. I branch off from there but not as regularly. That being said, it would be helpful to have a better mechanism for discovering new threads. I fully agree that it’s not hard by any measure to browse around on your own, and I’m not implying that the admins should bend over backwards just because people are lazy. But maybe there are some features here that ultimately aren’t that useful and could be replaced with others that are?

For instance - does anyone use the New Posts link at the top of the page? Or the Hot / Threads / Latest Activity sub-banner? I personally never interact with those because they’re either overwhelmed with front page discussions or just too narrowly focused on individual posts without broader context.

Could something like a New Threads page be added? Ideally one where anything from the front page could be filtered out? If we’re trying to encourage the creation of new threads then that could at least help lower the barrier for engagement.

 

[dferrantino]

Call me old school, but I just have Chrome default to opening up GESC and The Lounge, and the new stuff is just what's bolded.

I'm actually blown away by this idea that so many people are only interacting with the "Your Threads" options.

 

[AbidingArs]

I'm pretty much the same as dferrantino, with the individual forums I'm interested in open in tabs (some frequently, some only once a day or so). I also use the Notifications for threads I watch/post in (not going to a separate screen for it, just checking the bell on the toolbar).

 

[Nauls]

It makes perfect sense to me. Perpetual threads are the established norm of much of the fora, heck, this particular thread was asking for the creation of another one.

The Threads with your posts page might as well be re-labeled to the Ars Perpetual Thread Emporium because that’s effectively what it functions as.

 

[Aurich]

The contributed threads page is my landing point on Ars, like many others I’m sure. I branch off from there but not as regularly. That being said, it would be helpful to have a better mechanism for discovering new threads. I fully agree that it’s not hard by any measure to browse around on your own, and I’m not implying that the admins should bend over backwards just because people are lazy. But maybe there are some features here that ultimately aren’t that useful and could be replaced with others that are?

For instance - does anyone use the New Posts link at the top of the page? Or the Hot / Threads / Latest Activity sub-banner? I personally never interact with those because they’re either overwhelmed with front page discussions or just too narrowly focused on individual posts without broader context.

Could something like a New Threads page be added? Ideally one where anything from the front page could be filtered out? If we’re trying to encourage the creation of new threads then that could at least help lower the barrier for engagement.

You're basically hitting on an idea I was pitching to Jason last night and this morning, which is something along the lines of a personalized landing page, that would show you maybe:

- Threads you've watched

- Threads you've participated in

- New threads from forums you're interested in

- Threads started by people you follow

Or something roughly like that. We could probably populate it automatically based on your participation, and then have some kind of option to fine tune it from there if you didn't find it quite right.

Still just a rough idea, but I think that could probably help some of this. It would benefit from the other half of the equation though, which is more people being willing to start new threads. But if discovery was easier that would certainly help new threads feel worthwhile.

If we could build such a page I would simply make it the default forum landing page for everyone, and let people change that if they wanted something else.

 

[Aurich]

Could something like a New Threads page be added? Ideally one where anything from the front page could be filtered out? If we’re trying to encourage the creation of new threads then that could at least help lower the barrier for engagement.

FWIW that's what Threads already is:

That's my default landing page when I hit the forums. It's just latest activity from across the forum.

But it has the front page, it has forums you might not care about, it's everything. So something more custom as noted above definitely could be more appealing and useful.

 

[MichaelC]

You're basically hitting on an idea I was pitching to Jason last night and this morning, which is something along the lines of a personalized landing page, that would show you maybe:

- Threads you've watched

- Threads you've participated in

- New threads from forums you're interested in

- Threads started by people you follow

Or something roughly like that. We could probably populate it automatically based on your participation, and then have some kind of option to fine tune it from there if you didn't find it quite right.

Still just a rough idea, but I think that could probably help some of this. It would benefit from the other half of the equation though, which is more people being willing to start new threads. But if discovery was easier that would certainly help new threads feel worthwhile.

If we could build such a page I would simply make it the default forum landing page for everyone, and let people change that if they wanted something else.

Doesn't the filter system already do that? I just talked about it a few posts up.

 

[Aurich]

Doesn't the filter system already do that? I just talked about it a few posts up.

I'm not sure I know exactly what you're referring to here. The only filter I use is the little menu next to the bell. Am I missing some feature that already does that I posted about? That would be awesomely embarrassing.

I'm not aware of how to get a view like that now.

 

[dferrantino]

I'm not sure I know exactly what you're referring to here. The only filter I use is the little menu next to the bell. Am I missing some feature that already does that I posted about? That would be awesomely embarrassing.

I'm not aware of how to get a view like that now.

You can't get all 3 of these things at once (the tickboxes in the bottom half are AND not OR), but I think this is what he's talking about:

 

[MichaelC]

On phone right now but it's there on a computer web browser as well. This was one of the best features made available when moving to this forum platform.

 

[dferrantino]

...wait @Aurich how do you not have the Filter on the right of the Threads view?

e: Toggle Sidebar.

 

[MichaelC]

He has the sidebar turned off. I do as well. But not before setting up the filters.

 

[Nauls]

FWIW that's what Threads already is:

That definitely gets part of the way there, but yeah not entirely since it doesn't allow ordering by thread creation date. That's ultimately all I envision when I think about it - a list of threads, filterable by forum, that can be ordered by creation date.

 

[dferrantino]

That definitely gets part of the way there, but yeah not entirely since it doesn't allow ordering by thread creation date. That's ultimately all I envision when I think about it - a list of threads, filterable by forum, that can be ordered by creation date.

It 100% does

 

[Nauls]

/squints

You're right! Thank you for the correction. I will retreat back into the bushes now.

 

[Aurich]

...wait @Aurich how do you not have the Filter on the right of the Threads view?

e: Toggle Sidebar.

There's an easy answer for that.

I uh, turned that sidebar off on like day 0, before the forum even launched, and never look at it. I just have thread titles, full width on the page.

So, welp.

I completely and utterly forgot those filters even exist.

That would be awesomely embarrassing.

Can confirm.

 

[Aurich]

I'm going to scrape this egg off my face and go make huevos rancheros.

 

[meisanerd]

So, here's an idea. How about we create a perpetual thread starting thread. You post in there, and it automatically gets split off into a new topic that people can then post on. Keeps all the camps happy, we have a perpetual thread, and a bunch of new threads... #problemsolved....

I really think that separate threads are a much better option than these perpetual ones. Like, with the "weekly" news thread in the soapbox, I frequently have to scroll past a bunch of posts talking about something that I really don't care about, so I can see news posts that I might actually be interested in. If they were separate threads, I just skip over them and don't have to read a bunch of posts that I don't care about.

 

[PlasticExistence]

It's one thing to drop a comment into a long-running thread that gets buried and turns invisible in short order...it's another to effectively walk into the middle of a quietly-lit room full of ongoing conversations being held by long-term regulars, clear your throat, and loudly announce, "Hey, everybody! Listen to what I have to say!" It can be intimidating, here.

If you did that, I would listen.