Suggestion: Make megathreads more prominent

CannibalisticApple
Thu, 22 Jun 2023 22:32:38 +0000

So while megathreads are a thing, I think we can really benefit from making them more prominent. Because right now there are two topics about the Titan submersible on my front page (and two more if I go to the second page), multiple surveys about movies, and at least one new thread per day about the current reddit fiasco. It's getting a bit cluttered.

So my proposal: make megathreads more prominent.

Give designated megathreads a colored border or some other simple decoration to make them grab the eye and stand out.

Pin some megathreads so they show at the top of their respective tildes, especially if they relate to ongoing or developing events. I don't think this is necessary for all megathreads like recurring ones, but it will help cut down clutter. (Note: I did check, and this is indeed on Gitlab. Deimos left a comment three years ago that code was made, just hadn't been merged into Tildes yet due to not being needed at the time.)

A little more advanced: for ongoing events, maybe have some way that multiple people can edit a post with updates on new developments or links. That way even if the original poster is offline when some big event happens, someone can update it or add new links.

Related to above: have a pinned comment on such megathreads to help collect links and such. This would probably be the ideal editable comment rather than the original post.

To help cut down on the survey threads that typically just ask for lists without much discourse (e.g. "favorite X movie"): Have recurring survey megathreads asking the most common such questions, possibly each week or every other week

You could either cycle through different questions each time (particularly in movies where you can just go through the different genres), or just collate the most common questions

Also, have a list somewhere of previous times a question has been asked, and then have a "cool down" period before a question can be asked again. Maybe a wiki-style list that people can edit and add links to previous threads?

Of these suggestions, I think the first two would be the most effective and also the simplest to implement. Adding some visual indicator for a megathread would be a simple CSS change, and apparently the code already exists for pinning threads. Just a couple thoughts!

Comments URL: https://tildes.net/~tildes/16tq/suggestion_make_megathreads_more_prominent

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