They don't have to. It's enough that those who have been along from the beginning know what they're talking about, and that those who do read it all, do it. Nothing wrong in jumping along half the way through either. If the issue is handled already, people will inform the fellow as they do now, or start another discussion about the subject if s/he has a fresh take on it. It's not really different from the 200 post limit on those regards, just more spacey (which would be welcome when needed).

As opposed to the questions they ask in repeat thread #4 that where already asked ans answered in repeat thread #2 but they didn't look for it? Or the questions that are answered right before a thread gets locked and are often not read at all because the forum software marks the whole thread as "read" when it's locked and so the answer never reaches the one asking it?

This exactly. There are other forums where the pages of a thread is over 100, and it just gets overwhelming. Fortunately in that situation the posters are capable of keeping it somewhat organized and pleasant. Here...ehhh...

Put it this way, if we did away with a post limit, those long threads would be locked for being off topic about the third time we had to intervene for it being off topic posts or becoming a place for chit chat which belongs in a chat room rather than a forum. And if we lock it for cause, you would not be able to make a new one.

And that is what those long threads are in other forums, a chat room. I mean just exactly how many threads have thousands of posts that are actually relevant to the OP?

And exactly what sorts of threads attract that many posts in the first place? We are here for discussion of games. It is rare indeed that we have threads that continue after the 200 post limit.

Bottom line is that it is much easier for moderators to keep up with and to moderate effectively. I've moderated in places without a post limit and those very long threads are rarely more than a chat room.

In my personal opinion it's preferable to have some questions get repeated after 200 posts than every other page or so. Once a thread gets to be ginormous, it becomes a sort of black hole of information that nobody reads. Nobody could reasonably be expected to have read post "X" on page 243 out of a 500 page thread.

Yes. I wish more forums enacted this rule. It works well here and keeps everything tidy.

Regarding searches, I think more people would use it if the flood-control was removed: which I wish they would do. It's not actually tied to posting flood-control, and I can't imagine it's that much of a drain on resources; it'd be easy enough to limit the unrestricted search functionality to people with more than, say, 50 posts, so it'd be harder to use it as a sort of DoS attack.

I find the post limit annoying at times, and I would say that on a purely knee-jerk level I don't like it. I do, on the other hand, appreciate the reasons behind the policy and think that it makes good forum policy even if I, as a user, find it annoying at times.

Here's the first 5 I found from different forums I'm a part of. Bonus: 3 of them are for gaming and 2 are for Skyrim! All of them have thousands of posts and all of them are on topic. In fact I've found that the more posts a thread has the more likely it is to stay on topic. Frankly it's harder to find threads with thousands of posts that are offtopic.
http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/286552-skyrim-information/
http://www.sherdog.net/forums/f2/official-ufc-132-cruz-vs-faber-discussion-thread-6-15et-3-15pt-1724429/index144.html
http://www.fohguild.org/forums/mmorpg-general-discussion/39425-wow-4-0-horde-bdf-join-foh-463.html
http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=135009921
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3430464

For those that are advocating a post limit because it's hard to peruse massive threads, can you explain how it's easier to find information in 1000 posts spread amongst 5 threads than it is to find 1000 posts in one thread?

Personally I find massive threads easier to moderate because the information is in one location rather than distributed in many other threads, but that's just a personal preference and hard to quantify. The first thread I linked is 9 months old and has 4390 posts. I can't imagine I'd have an easier to time moderating it if it were split into 22 different threads over those 9 months.

I also don't understand how locking threads before they go offtopic in order to avoid the thread going off topic can save time for the moderators. Almost all the topics I've seen closed due to thread size were on topic, not having to bother closing them would save time.

Finally I resent the accusations that the moderators here are lazy or are taking the easy route. Not only are they very good and very active but they are very diligent in following a time consuming system.

It definitely prevents unnecessary pvssyr and spam after everyone have said what they can that is relevant. Sometimes, what is relevant isn't enough, though...

I Voted Yes, and as I read though this thread every one of the Moderators explained with Crystal Clarity why I voted yes.. lol

:goodjob: Wise Moderators. :spotted owl:

Of course large threads are easy to moderate because you don't have to lock them every 200 posts or make new ones for the ones that are made by moderators.

We don't lock threads before they go off topic, but we do when they do and we delete or caution and if they continue off topic again we lock them. If we lock a thread and it's still on topic, we allow another to be made. How many of those threads you linked had no off topic chit chat? How many were informative?

Our forum is here to get information out about Bethesda's games and people just showing up won't go through that many posts to find information about a game. Rather they will just make a new thread with their question.

There are very, very few threads that are remade repeatedly. And those threads become a party room very quickly.

Anyway, it's the way it's been here since I joined back in 2002 and I don't see it changing. Our long time members seem to like it, the moderators seem to like it and I see little reason to change it. Personally I'd want to keep it just for the sake of nostalgia but really, it is an excellent moderator tool, less intimidating for new members (which we have many all the time) and it keeps threads fresh and on topic. It prevents a few folks from making it their chat room and causes no harm to anyone. :shrug:

That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.

I honestly don't really care.

yes. I like the rule. there can always be new threads about the same topic anyway.

This is basically what it came down to for me as well so I must fully agree with Summer here. I didn't like it that much either at first, but it does manage to keep posters more on the topic and less likely to waste posts with useless pvssyr talk and /or spam.

It just really hurts the modding communities where older useful topics get purged after some time. I found that to be the case in several Hardware Issues forums here too....lots of useful guides I wish I had made copies of before they disappeared. So that's a note to all of you that have come across great guides or info in closed topics....make copies of it (with OP permission if need be) so that it is not lost and can be re-communicated in the new topic.

first off, making your response inline with the quote makes it harder to read and respond too

(1) if they are copy pasting their posts from another thread then they are just spamming
(2) if it wasn't for the 200 post limit you wouldn't have 15 pages in two threads to deal with, you'd have hundreds of pages to read through, that is how threads end up on forums as active as this one without the post limit
(3) except you still can't tell where the new content begins if parts of the content from the thread are added to the original post
(4) i dont see how this is a con to the 200 post limit
(5) are you saying that your posting information in threads that are completely off topic from the thread?


second link is too broad of a subject, talking about anything related to an entire sport/act, which could easily be divided into their own specific topics to make things easier to find, page 244 which i picked by random had maybe 1 or 2 posts with actual content
third link.... i'm never going to read through all that, and neither are a lot of other people i'm sure, so all that "information" together in one thread is lost in all the drivel of random comments about the subject
fourth link... filled with out of date information that is no longer valid

There is no need for over 200 posts.

I haven't seen a single discussion on this forum that warranted that many posts. Everyone has there 2 cents, some people even have arguments. Given that the two or more people are civil enough to keep the thread open, that still rarely takes over 200 posts.

And most of the times they are just going in circles.

But that also has to do with how many good discussion topics that aren't allowed here.

Everything has been said in 200 posts, and 1 in 100 people read every post in the thread. There are likely 10 posts in this specific thread that I'm echoing right now. With an increased number of posts per thread, the number of people who read the thread in it's entirety will decrease and posts that repeat will increase. No point in having it.

I don't think that taking out the post limit is the solution. Could anyone else agree to raising the post limit to maybe 400 or 500 posts? Why wouldn't that work?

I believe it's just about right as it is - somewhere between 2 - 10 pages is probably about the maximum that most people will comfortably read through.

If you came across a thread with 20 pages or 30 pages (400 - 600 posts), would you honestly read it all before posting?

Once threads become too long, they end up containing a lot of information that nobody bothers to read. In other forums with gigantic threads, people have a tendency to read only the latest page or so.

I like the 200 post limit rule! There are a lot of long threads that really just end up being repetitive at about that number o posts or before. And for those that aren't repetitive, new threads can get opened - like for popular non-Bethesda games, game mods, quiz threads, etc. But usually most discussion can happen in under 200 posts.

BTW, I'm looking forward to the dripping irony if this thread reaches 200 posts ^_^

I generally don't read any entire pages at all.

I read the OP, and usually base my response on that. Or just the thread title and sub-title (provided they seem self-explanatory enough). Like my earlier response in this thread. Only read the title. Nothing more.

I don't see anything wrong with it. It does make threads more manageable.

I figure the pros outnumber the cons, or at least it's all subjective.

From what I've seen though, if a popular topic reaches the 200 post limit, there's nothing wrong with starting a new thread. Keeps it fresh.