You Know What I Hate...

And I know this is the wrong, section, but what's happened to the layout of this forum in particular is terrible. Why must EVERYTHING be categorized in one of six or seven massive threads? Why can't an individual article about, say, Pau Gasol, have its own thread, as opposed to it being crammed into a 400 page Pau Gasol thread which members must sift through? The forum is Laker discussion, hence it should completely reasonable to allow individual threads about individual topics on everything Lakers. I mean organizing topics is one thing, but this is just overload. Arguments that take place in these massive threads just persist because it's the same thread people must keep returning to. It's sort of ridiculous, not to mention the fact that there's (at most) like only five new threads per week.

Anybody else have an opinion on this?

Do you want to see 3 pages worth of threads just describing how Andrew Bynum melted down?

You might not have scrolled down far enough. In Lakers Discussion right now on page one there are 5 different Kobe threads and 4 different Bynum threads as an example. Threads that worthwhile are generally kept open. Threads that aren't are generally locked or merged.

If too many redundant threads are open at once then good threads fall to page 2 where they go to die usually. It's an issue either way. You either have to click through a big thread multiple times or you have to click fewer times through more threads. Probably about the same number of clicks either way.

And I can say there are more than 5 new threads per week in LD. I just counted 11 new threads on page 1 of LD started this week.

24K GOLD wrote:Do you want to see 3 pages worth of threads just describing how Andrew Bynum melted down?

I just think a middle ground is necessary, and very possible. There could be one specific thread about Bynum melting down.

It seems that as news, or events take place, there should be an appropriate thread made for it, and others should be closed. I'm pretty sure that's how most forums operate. But here we have these massive threads that totally eat up a majority of potential for new conversations between members. And beyond that, it's just nice to come to the forum and see some new titles, new articles being posted and discussed, etc. Not just Kobe's 400 page thread where I have no idea where I was last or what's been posted since I've last visited.

Personally, I think opinions etc about a player should be put in their main threads for which each player has their own. If a member thinks Bynum should be traded next season, I don't think they need a new thread for that. Post it in Bynum's discussion thread.

But If say, an article by a respected sports writer comes out about a player that is interesting I would prefer a new thread to be started rather then it being lumped in an appreciation thread where I will never see it.

It's just using discretion. If it's a new tidbit that is worthy of most people checking out it should get it's own thread.

Alcindor wrote:Personally, I think opinions etc about a player should be put in their main threads for which each player has their own. If a member thinks Bynum should be traded next season, I don't think they need a new thread for that. Post it in Bynum's discussion thread.

But If say, an article by a respected sports writer comes out about a player that is interesting I would prefer a new thread to be started rather then it being lumped in an appreciation thread where I will never see it.

It's just using discretion. If it's a new tidbit that is worthy of most people checking out it should get it's own thread.

I mean that's what I'm saying. Right now it seems mods just arbitrarily decide whether or not a (legitimate) new bit of information should be placed in the big threads for each player, or given its own thread. I think any of these new legit articles, or an opinion that sums up the boards thoughts with in regards to content matter that should be discussed, should get its own thread. That just seems to make sense to me. I see no issue with threads going to page 2 and dying, either. I don't see the issue with that.

I agree with the OP, I hate navigating through threads that are 80 pages and try to pick up where I left off the last time I read it...there are some pointless threads, but threads that 9048903 pages and going back finding where I left off is ridiculous. And any update if you have a life is like 5 pages behind and it gets crazy to go back and find it....just the way i feel

Steve wrote:I agree with the OP, I hate navigating through threads that are 80 pages and try to pick up where I left off the last time I read it...there are some pointless threads, but threads that 9048903 pages and going back finding where I left off is ridiculous. And any update if you have a life is like 5 pages behind and it gets crazy to go back and find it....just the way i feel

^^^ This.

This forum is VERY unique in this manner. If CL was making cars they would still be putting carbs on their engines...

Steve wrote:I agree with the OP, I hate navigating through threads that are 80 pages and try to pick up where I left off the last time I read it...there are some pointless threads, but threads that 9048903 pages and going back finding where I left off is ridiculous. And any update if you have a life is like 5 pages behind and it gets crazy to go back and find it....just the way i feel

You agree with the OP's statement about having more threads open and you end your statement by saying anyone with a life has to sift through pages of threads to find what you are looking for?

You know if every little thing go their own thread, you would be sifting through many more pages then you are doing right now.

Steve wrote:I agree with the OP, I hate navigating through threads that are 80 pages and try to pick up where I left off the last time I read it...there are some pointless threads, but threads that 9048903 pages and going back finding where I left off is ridiculous. And any update if you have a life is like 5 pages behind and it gets crazy to go back and find it....just the way i feel

You guys do know that if you looked at a thread while logged in, all you have to do is click on the little yellow page icon with an arrow next to the title of the thread, and it will take you to the first post created after you left that thread right?

You don't have to sift through thousands of post, just experiment with the controls so you know how to use the forum.

I'd rather stay on the first page, if it's a popular topic it's going to get bumped constantly, plus threads that are really long usaully have a totally different discussion going on. Where as if each thread was made for each topic there'd be more discussion on the topic at hand as opposed to still discussing something from the middle of the season. Don't get me wrong, I love this board and the people that post on it are better thhn most other forums, but I seriously can't stand how like every thread is like 30 pages. Like anything happens with Bynum automatically going into Bynum discussion is insane. It's at the point where we just have a different discussion thread for each player...I dunno this was always my biggest issue with board

This is just a case of not being able to please everyone all the time.

Years ago, before I was a Mod on here, the site was exactly as you guys are suggesting. People could open up a thread about whatever topic without having them merged. What happened for example, is that if a player had a bad game, or a good game, all you could find on the first page (if not the second as well) was one post after another about the same topic or something very similar. Then there would be 4 or 5 articles by sports writers about the same topic each with it's own thread. All in all, it was very annoying. You'd have multiple threads with no replies, and have to go in and out of each to read everything. This would happen after nearly every game, and especially if anything controversial happened.

There was a lot more complaining about that than there is about having large threads, and merging.

Barnstable wrote:This is just a case of not being able to please everyone all the time.

Years ago, before I was a Mod on here, the site was exactly as you guys are suggesting. People could open up a thread about whatever topic without having them merged. What happened for example, is that if a player had a bad game, or a good game, all you could find on the first page (if not the second as well) was one post after another about the same topic or something very similar. Then there would be 4 or 5 articles by sports writers about the same topic each with it's own thread. All in all, it was very annoying. You'd have multiple threads with no replies, and have to go in and out of each to read everything. This would happen after nearly every game, and especially if anything controversial happened.

There was a lot more complaining about that than there is about having large threads, and merging.

See this I could see and don't have a problem, but take for example the Metta World Peace discussion thread...that thread is a perfect example...the whole elbow situation should totally have a thread of it's own where we can keep track of the length of the suspension rather then going into the MWP thread where that would discuss his play...Like I said I get merging when it's needed, I just kinda always felt that the board is really quick to merge

^ I can understand that.

Shoot there are multiple Mods and Admin on this board, and we don't always agree ourselves, but overall the board is much more organized because merging topics to keep discussions neat works more often than not. We often allow side topics to stay in their own thread as well if we think it's something that should be discussed separately, but like I said, when a decision comes down to a judgement call, not everyone's going to be happy with it.

Could the MWP suspension be it's own topic? Sure IMO. Will every one of the 10 or so Mod/admin agree? Maybe...

We talk to each other, and listen to member's opinions, and requests, but in the end, we have to take into account what our experience tells us is best one topic at a time.

OK, fair enough response, I appreciate you taking the time to respond,( even though i didn't make the thread) no worries either way, not like I'm going anywhere else.

Been a member here for over 6 years now. Used to visit daily, multiple times even.

The reason I have exponentially decreased my visits here is so eloquently described by the OP. I am really darn tired of seeing "Pau Gasol Discussion" instead of "Pau Gasol to sit out tonight with tendinitis".

No one has the time to sit and look through 900 pages of thread just to see what fellow CLers are saying about one particular aspect of Pau Gasol.

This change occurred a while back and I gave it my due diligence, sat here and accepted it because I love this community and its posters. Needless to say though, it made this forum extremely unappealing to visit.

Although I now dedicate a majority of my Laker forum time to *another* Laker forum for this very reason, I felt an iota of passion to at least post this here in writing.

I saw an above post by Barnstable that explained "why" this change was instituted.

I get it--we don't want 5 threads on Pau Gasol's tendinitis ("Pau Trade Value Down", "Pau Not the Bee's Knee's" "Pau is Done").

I get it. So sure, exercise moderation as necessary, and merge all of those related threads into one "Pau Gasol Tendinitis" thread.

But to mix each topic into a greater "Pau Gasol Discussion" is just annoying. And unappealing. And a headache. And the reason I frequent other forums when this used to be my unrivaled one stop Laker shop.

Oh and I play by the rules. Dug through and found this vaguely titled thread, when I would've easily made a new thread.

Chillbongo wrote:Oh and I play by the rules. Dug through and found this vaguely titled thread, when I would've easily made a new thread.

And it's appreciated.

I will bring this up to the staff one more time just to make sure we can't do any thing to create a happy middle.

Chillbongo, tha son etc. hear me out

we have had this talk before with the staff, my opinion (literally what I told the staff back then)

Do I think we lock threads to quickly? I really haven't noticed it myself.

That being said, its important for us to know WHY we lock a thread. We don't have guidelines, we use common sense.

Whats the goal of locking a thread? to make sure we don't have the same topic being discussed in multiple threads (redundancy) and force people to click though threads and write the same replys every time. Same topics though doesn't mean "about the same guy" for example. We can't only have 5 threads, one for offense, one for defense, one for bench, starters and one for coaches and call it a day. You could very well have 5 Kobe threads discussing different stuff. We do want to engage people to talk about different nuances of something, even if it requires more than one thread, its not like we set a goal of bandwidth usage or threads.

The most important thing in a forum is that we make sure discussions have a "structure". When you have a GIANT thread of 200 pages, discussions are really cluttered and a group of guys are arguing about something different than others and quoting eachother etc which is really hard to read and people tend to skip them (I tend to do sometimes). So I absolutely see the issues with big threads.

We just have to be sure that people don't have to switch back and forth to talk about the same stuff or click on different threads just to find out its about the same issue as the thread they just left. But members CAN use multiple threads in an elegant way and indirectly help us to reduce clutter of a huge thread.

Things that should definitely get locked are just dumb threads or provoking threads.

Stuff like "WHERE YOU HATERS NOW??" or "I always knew it" ....nothing good is going to come out of those. We also have to make sure people use the right headlines for threads or else we will correct it. The headline has to reflect the topic thats being discussed.

If there is a thread of "Steve Nash is getting old"....it can easily go into the official Nash discussion thread. But if there is a "How should we utilize Nash's play with Howard in the 4th quarter"...well thats a different discussion and has merit to stay there IMO.

I'm not saying we have never been guilty of locking something useful, mistakes happen...sometimes, its worth to see where the thread is headed first and then make a decision before making a quick decision to lock a thread. As always, its just important we are all on the same page with the members in terms of the philosophy.

To sum it up, getting rid of redundant discussions and those threads where you see people will make fun of it or criticize the guy who opened it. At the same time engaging discussions and tunneling topics to different threads is a very useful method of improving the user experience by getting MORE discussions, BETTER discussions and LESS off-topic stuff.

I'm personally not a huge fan of 50+ page threads...the talks are usually way too cluttered. You can barely realize what people are talking about because every group of 3-4 guys are talking different stuff.
Also another aspect is if I see "Steve Nash Discussion"...I might not feel engaged to check it out. But if I see "Nash's impact on offense"...then I might feel like I have to say something about this.

Again, I have absolutely nothing specific in mind. Thats just what I think makes sense. If you have anything to add to this or have any counter arguments, I'll be glad to know.

BTW, on CL we have always engaged members to help us out, give us feedback and we always listen.

If people want things this way or that way....for us, it doesn't make a difference. Its not like we earn money from CL. We are a community about the Lakers, we are fans and the members are fans and the only thing thats relevant to us is everyone having a pleasant stay here on CL.

lakerswiz wrote:This is where I don't understand. Why not just keep a Pau general thread and then with the injury have a Pau: Tendinitis thread? Lock it up when he's back and just missing jump shots again.

That's what we do for the most part.... but what tends to happen is something big goes down (like Pau getting hurt or something) and someone posts the article about it in the Pau thread. Now we have like 2+ pages of replies and discussions regarding that topic in the Pau thread FIRST before someone doesn't see it in the Pau thread, and posts the article as the topic of it's own thread. Now we're faced with the dilemma, should we allow the topic to stay open and talk about the same thing in two places, or promote people to go to the first thread that had the topic (the big Pau thread in this case)? This tends to be a judgment call on whether the topic will continue to be discussed enough that the discussions won't suffer being "watered" down in multiple places rather than one high level discussion location.

If you'll notice, we do allow most unique articles to have their own topic if they were posted as their own thread first (or at least there isn't a ton of replies about the topic elsewhere yet), or even a random topic that we think will garner enough interest to carry it's own thread.

One thing I have asked of the staff as a result of this discussion, and the staff seems to agree with, is to try our best to always remember to update the thread title with the page number when a new topic comes up. I know it's frustrating to not be able to find the first page of a breaking story. I've found that frustrating myself. So basically, if it's worthy of a title change, it's worthy of a page number update as well

Chillbongo wrote:Been a member here for over 6 years now. Used to visit daily, multiple times even.

The reason I have exponentially decreased my visits here is so eloquently described by the OP. I am really darn tired of seeing "Pau Gasol Discussion" instead of "Pau Gasol to sit out tonight with tendinitis".

No one has the time to sit and look through 900 pages of thread just to see what fellow CLers are saying about one particular aspect of Pau Gasol.

This change occurred a while back and I gave it my due diligence, sat here and accepted it because I love this community and its posters. Needless to say though, it made this forum extremely unappealing to visit.

Although I now dedicate a majority of my Laker forum time to *another* Laker forum for this very reason, I felt an iota of passion to at least post this here in writing.

I'm going to have to agree with the OP and this post. With the layout of every thread being hundreds of pages long...it just makes it annoying to me to go through multiple pages to see the latest updates on a player. There very well could be multiple updates throughout the week so it's easy to miss something about a player. As a result, I definitely go in to LD less because of this.

I completely understand the argument for the current format though. If more people like it like this, then that's fine but I just wanted to express my opinion.

Lakers injury report thread.....Laker player gets hurt news goes there, discuss injuries only.

Lakers trade news/ trade rumors thread.......All rumors about Lakers players go here, discuss the current trade rumors.

Maybe that might work? It's at least some middle ground where we are adding threads, but they are specific and shouldn't get cluttered with random banter from the bigger threads.

Thanks for the responses CL. It looks like there are pros and cons to both sides.

There are definitely some elements I didn't consider on the Moderator/Admin end that users just don't see. I can definitely see how being completely lax on thread moderation/locking/maintaining structure could lead a forum to the dirt and cause things to become redundant.

It seems like the middle ground should be met by the community members. Being more mindful of their actions/posts and trying to construct a cohesive discussion on a good platform. Not saying we all haven't been guilty of trolling at one point or another, but the anonymity factor of the internet reduces any given poster's inhibitions.

Suggestion:

Instead of updating each thread with a specific sub-title update ("Pau Gasol Discussion" to read "Pau Gasol Discussion: ("Pau to sit out tonight vs HOU with Tendinitis")), what if you changed the thread title to the related event?

So instead of it being the entire Pau thread with the tendinitis update in parentheses & page number, how about changing the ENTIRE Pau discussion thread name to "Pau to Sit out vs HOU with Tendinitis pg 400 (Pau Gasol Discussion)" for that time being.

And then once that event diffuses, change it back to "Pau Gasol discussion" or just wait until the next event and update it--"Pau to play tonight vs OKC pg 440".

Would like to hear your thoughts as there may have been something I didn't consider when suggesting this.