NationStates Jolt Archive

Firstly, for anyone who doesn't know my name, I'm a NSGer. I don't roleplay and I have very minimal engagement with NS regions. This is entirely about NS General.

The current policy as regards US election related threads, as administered by Ardchoille, appears to be sorting them into one of three threads and merging them thence. Or locking them if that's not possible.

The reasoning behind that appears to be to keep the front page from being flooded with US-election-related threads, and fair enough. By my rough estimate, a third of the posters to NSG are American (USA), and probably a higher proportion of the thread-starters.

Here's my point: with the US election still six months away, and that being a very important election by anybody's terms (Iraq policy ...) there are going to be an awful lot of new threads which either start on that subject, or move there quickly and don't move away. That's going to mean an awful lot of mod work (and hard decisions, and conflict with the players) in merging them to one of the three designated threads.

I don't know how hard it would be to make a sub-forum. Mods, tell me if I'm asking the impossible, but is it possible to make a sub-forum of General where all threads could be moved, unmerged and unlocked, for any and all who want to talk US elections?

I don't understand the mechanics of it, but I imagine it as "click on General" --> "US elections" / "General General". And inside the "General --> US Elections" sub-forum, every thread deemed to be Election related. Simply moved there, no work merging or judging lockability.

One more suggestion: on Inauguration Day, put all the thread back on the front page of NSG. They'll drop like a stone.

(EVERYONE, mods please don't rule too soon)

That's not a bad idea, as far as I'm concerned, but I'd like to hear other Mod opinions on it.

A qualified Yay! -- if it's do-able.

The "Yay!" because it sounds as if it'd be less effort, the "qualified" because the current neutral titles of the threads at least put a small barrier in the way of deliberate or unintentional provocation.

I wince at the thought of a whole forum of election threads competing for players' attention through increasingly bizarre (trolling- and flamebait-laden) titles, ending up with more disgruntled players and tetchier mods.

I also wince at the thought of trying to avoid this by coming up with neutral titles for every conceivable facet of the election process.

But the mega-thread certainly did become unwieldy. The separate "polls" one seems to me to be serving its purpose of hiving off the number-crunching. Let's see what the battle-scarred veterans of the 2004 election advise.

* Fris pokes the expanding idea balloon with a sharp pointy object *

While the idea is sound, it falls apart on execution. We don't have the ability to add new forums without going through Jolt. By the time they got done with ignoring our emails and actually added the forum, set permissions appropriately, and allowed us to use it ... it would be complete on about 5 November 2008.

We can raise it, but don't hold your breath.

HotRodia, thanks. Looking at it now, I'm surprised anyone can see the idea in that bloated post.

For anyone who didn't get it the first time, it's basically to have a folder on the front page where people can start any US-election thread they want. Any that start out in the real General would get moved there with extreme prejudice.

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A qualified Yay! -- if it's do-able.

The "Yay!" because it sounds as if it'd be less effort, the "qualified" because the current neutral titles of the threads at least put a small barrier in the way of deliberate or unintentional provocation.

I wince at the thought of a whole forum of election threads competing for players' attention through increasingly bizarre (trolling- and flamebait-laden) titles, ending up with more disgruntled players and tetchier mods.
Well, if they start them in a "US Elections" sub-forum at least they won't attract EVERYONE's attention ...?

I'm somewhat interested in the US elections, despite not living there. But it's getting into the range of the impossible to read the whole thread (s).
I also wince at the thought of trying to avoid this by coming up with neutral titles for every conceivable facet of the election process.
But you shouldn't have to do that. If thread-starters do the right thing and start their election-related threads in the sub-forum, you wouldn't have to do anything!
But the mega-thread certainly did become unwieldy. The separate "polls" one seems to me to be serving its purpose of hiving off the number-crunching.
You're right, it certainly helped.
Let's see what the battle-scarred veterans of the 2004 election advise.
Hear, hear. Despite Fris's pointy stick, if veterans can think of a reason it's a good or bad idea they could still say so?

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* Fris pokes the expanding idea balloon with a sharp pointy object *

While the idea is sound, it falls apart on execution. We don't have the ability to add new forums without going through Jolt. By the time they got done with ignoring our emails and actually added the forum, set permissions appropriately, and allowed us to use it ... it would be complete on about 5 November 2008.

We can raise it, but don't hold your breath.

OK. I thought it might be like that, but wasn't sure if creating a "folder" was something game admins could do. :(

There's probably something impractical with this idea, too: You Mods can bury a thread, right? Can you put a ceiling on it, keep it from rising above say the tenth page? Then there could be a sticky on the front page, linking to that tenth (or whatever) page.

(Even if so, the downside would be that players couldn't start their thread "there." Each one would need to be pinned-down/buried by mod action.)

I imagine US players will have a fit at this idea. US election threads not "hot" on the front page? We're being marginalized, etc.

* Fris pokes the expanding idea balloon with a sharp pointy object *

While the idea is sound, it falls apart on execution. We don't have the ability to add new forums without going through Jolt. By the time they got done with ignoring our emails and actually added the forum, set permissions appropriately, and allowed us to use it ... it would be complete on about 5 November 2008.

We can raise it, but don't hold your breath.

I thought about that too, but I figured they could have it for us by August. Maybe I'm just a glass is half full kinda guy.

Do you remember when two (I think?) US election threads were stickied to keep it all in one place? That worked, didn't it?

Well, it's not a problem to sticky the three we've got, killing one when the Democrat nomination's over.

Of course, that will make it look as if NSG is dominated by US politics ... um, yeah, well ...

Expert advice welcomed.

* Fris pokes the expanding idea balloon with a sharp pointy object *

While the idea is sound, it falls apart on execution. We don't have the ability to add new forums without going through Jolt. By the time they got done with ignoring our emails and actually added the forum, set permissions appropriately, and allowed us to use it ... it would be complete on about 5 November 2008.

We can raise it, but don't hold your breath.

Which once again begs the question: why jolt? Not that I'm bitching like that one guy that one time. If jolt works, it works.

Query: stickied redirect to a non-jolt forum (like invisionfree) or would that violate some jolt-NS contract or too much work or etc.?

Which once again begs the question: why jolt? Not that I'm bitching like that one guy that one time. If jolt works, it works.

I know that wasn't directed at me, but ... I'd be prepared to pay money to use the forum (eg Jolt premium membership) and if enough NSers were prepared to do likewise, Jolt might give us all better service.

Just a thought, and not very on-topic. Mods delete this if you feel like it.

I'm curious as to why we can't have someone like Salusa or Violet made a forum administrator. Then we wouldn't have to deal with Jolt staff at all. ;)

I'm curious as to why we can't have someone like Salusa or Violet made a forum administrator. Then we wouldn't have to deal with Jolt staff at all. ;)


If only it were that easy... :p

This may sound a bit cynical, but doesn't every thread on NS eventually turn into a debate over American politics?

Or, you can just completely stop people from talking about American politics. Add a word filter on words like "Bush", "Clinton" and "Democrats" that automatically deletes the post and sends the offender an STI...

Can we put a word filter that puts all relevant names in the US elections to Reverend Wright? It would make all the proud generalites like myself look unbearably misinformed and we'd have to stop bickering or give up our own bloated sense of self-worth.

Just a thought.

Personally I'd rather see it all kept in General, so I could easily keep tabs on everything at once. A sub-forum would just mean that I wouldn't go there. I'm lazy like that.

And it all comes and goes in waves, just like how there's what a sudden surge of "how do you like your [body part]" today (five threads).

<word filter ideas>

Saving these evilly till mod suggestion box opens for April 1, 2009.

<sticky the existing threads>

Though it's not a problem to do it, I don't really see the point in stickying them six months before the poll.

With Jolt providing Today's Posts, Thread Subscription and a User CP that lets you re-jig the page/post order to see the most recent first, election junkies can get their fix fairly easily anyway.

<let market forces operate>

(ie, go back to having no "official" threads.) No. There's too much work cleaning up the debris after troll threads explode.

<lock when they get loaded>

That could work. Not with a set post limit, because no-one wants to stop an argument in the middle, but people could just let the mods know when a thread's getting unwieldy.

<prune threads>

Splitting off, say, the 100 earliest posts from a mega-thread and letting them sink to the bottom of General. Again, you'd need to let us know when a thread was ready.