As this is a Science forum maybe a new type of post is needed. This new post will allow people to answer to replies but they are not shown until the post maker allows. I often post to get feedback on certain ideas that come to mind and I find that often the first reply dictates all the other replies. For example if you look at my "Worship me" post the first post is about sex and then all other posts follow the same Theme. The influence of the previous posters is so strong that many posts are of little value. However, if the post maker can decide when the posts are reviled it could stop this problem and lead to a whole new method of posting that is much more in line with scientific thinking. What are your views?
Absolutely no! Most posters here will simply disallow all replies that they don't agree with (especially in pseudoscience, religion and world events forums) and this place will become a dumb happy-land where it seems that everyone agrees with everyone.
there are plenty of times i will read the thread name and the first post then reply without ever reading anything inbetween
I agree with you that the system as you state it could never work. However, I did not mean that you could pick and chose but rather all posts are held back and then at a certain time all posts are allowed. This would eliminate a huge amount of bias and it could also lead to a new approach to posting that we have not seen before.
It's up to you as thread lead to keep everyone on topic, if you can't manage that then don't bother starting your own threads.
that's too bad. ALEXB - that is an interesting idea. You could have a thread where everyone who posts promises not to read any of the other posts until the second page is full or whatever - I'm sure it wouldn't be that difficult for people to purposefully ignore the other posts for a minute, some people do it anyway, apparently.
I think that if the thread isn't going as planned, the creator of the thread should have the option, with supervision, to destroy and start over. This would also be good for really, really long threads. Sometimes they are so long and half of it isn't on point, that it becomes impossible to contribute unless you have kept up from the beginning. This destruction power would have to limited, supervised and punished for abuse. Max
Or maybe another idea would be to have threads within threads. So that people who go off topic (but still relate to the orginal thread) can start a new thread.
An alternative idea is if, by request, the moderators go into a thread that has off-topic or non-serious posts and either edit or delete some, or split the thread. I can think of a couple threads of mine that need that. If a mod reads this, I ask you this: Is that feasible?
I don't think the mods will want to get involved with this thread as there is no reason to block it which is all these seem to do.
Athel - we are happy to look at any thread you bring to our attention. Send a PM with your concerns and we'll try to be accommodating if the effort required is not overly grand. Often, however, it is easiest for you to pick a point in a "crippled" thread and quote it to a new thread to continue on. :m: Peace.