# Revisit the 1,000 Post per thread limit/lockdown?



## Fofer

Hello new Capable Overlords:

On the previous server TCF lived on, we were told that very long threads were causing site slowdowns ... and so every thread that went past a post count of 1,000 would get locked. 

As part of this change, users were then supposed to start new "continuation" threads of active discussions, perhaps linking to the previous one, if they hoped for chats to continue. 

As it's all a manual process, it creates quite a bit of noise, as folks step over each other to create the continuation threads. The end result (IMHO) is that discussion is fractured and disjointed, difficult to follow (and review/search,) and participating folks inevitably get lost in the shuffle. 

Now, there are threads, and "sons of" threads and "revenge of" threads and 14 volumes of official threads, and it's all very... cluttered.


So my question is, now that the server and software has been updated, can we relax the 1,000 post-per-thread limit... and go back to the way things Used To Be?

Thanks for the consideration.


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## eddyj

What he said!


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## Bryanmc

Good question.


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## newsposter

so britney is back?

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showpost.php?p=3668007&postcount=827

/unlock


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## JayDog

Here here!


or is that... hear hear!


plus the fact that not all threads were locked past 1000 posts just added to the fact that the whole idea was just ludicrous to begin with.


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## pcguru83

I personally prefer the 1,000 reply limit. I think it makes the thread more "compartmentalized" and easier to follow/catch up on. I find particularly long threads very unwieldy to navigate.


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## Fofer

pcguru83 said:


> I personally prefer the 1,000 reply limit. I think it makes the thread more "compartmentalized" and easier to follow/catch up on. I find particularly long threads very unwieldy to navigate.


But if you take a step back, and think of the actual discussion in total, isn't it unwieldier to navigate 13 threads... instead of 1?

*Exhibit A:*










Actual, real thread: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=373406

(And please note, the Official Mac Questions is the *only* thread where the participants are conscientious have been kind enough to keep such a "log." Any other such "continuing series" has no such thing.)

If starting new threads at 1,000 is intended to break down the insecurity/shyness of a newcomer "jumping in" to an old, established thread... I can understand it's utility.

But that's not what we've been told it's for; we're told it was to alleviate strain on the server. And I'm of the opinion that cohesive, comfortable discussion here has suffered as a result.

And I'm hoping the new server can handle the "strain," that's all.


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## Timber

:up:

-=Tim=-


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## PJO1966

Personally, I know that if I were to search for the answer to a question that I know has been answered before, it would be easier to search one thread. As it stands now, if I'm looking for an answer to a Mac question I would have to navigate through 14 threads.

The Hot Off the Press thread over at AVS is on it's second chapter. The current one has over 11,000 posts. The first chapter had something like 26,000 posts.


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## Fofer

PJO1966 said:


> Personally, I know that if I were to search for the answer to a question that I know has been answered before, it would be easier to search one thread. As it stands now, if I'm looking for an answer to a Mac question I would have to navigate through 14 threads.


And what if you were looking for an Xbox 360 answer? There have been quite a few continuations of that thread, with no "log" to speak of in order to even know how to find/navigate old ones.

(The crappy vBulletin search capabilities certainly don't help matters.)


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## DVDerek

pcguru83 said:


> I personally prefer the 1,000 reply limit. I think it makes the thread more "compartmentalized" and easier to follow/catch up on. I find particularly long threads very unwieldy to navigate.


Let's use the Mac Questions thread as a guide. Person A gets a new mac and comes to the Mac Questions thread that is on post 500 on this particular incarnation but has 8000 or so other posts in other threads. They have a simple question, so they search the thread and find nothing. They ask the simple question.

Person B says, "Hey, didn't that other guy ask that not so long ago? I'm pretty sure I just answered that." They too search the thread but find nothing. They search the entire site, but that search is too broad. If there had been one big thread they could easily have searched the thread they were currently reading and posted a link back to the original answer.

Sure, no newcomer is going to read 8000 posts, but are they likely to read 900? Nope.


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## DVDerek

Also, I find myself tentative to ask a question if we're anywhere near the end of a thread because it's just going to get locked and then I'll have to hope someone reads about it in the old thread and then replies to it in the new thread.

On the new thread side, I'm hesitant to ask a question right off the bat because of the flood of "DOT!" posts.

Also, I've missed pages of these continuation threads because the old thread wrapped up and I didn't realize a new thread had started (I follow my UserCP mostly).


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## Fofer

Not to mention, the whole flurry of discussion and activity that involves t_he mere creation of a new thread_ tends to break up the flow of relevant conversation.


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## jsmeeker

plus, with a multi-part thread like the Mac thread, you have to keep subscribing to a new thread (unless you auto subscribe to every thread you post in). And I agree that stuff posted at the very end of the life of a thread can frequently be lost in the next version.


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## JayDog

DVDerek said:


> On the new thread side, I'm hesitant to ask a question right off the bat because of the flood of "DOT!" posts.


Yeah... we could eliminate at least 100 posts out of the 1000 just by eliminating the need for people to "dot" in without anything useful to say.

Although, I've mainly only seen that in the WAYT threads... which is kind of a special child anyways.


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## jsmeeker

JayDog said:


> Yeah... we could eliminate at least 100 posts out of the 1000 just by eliminating the need for people to "dot" in without anything useful to say.
> 
> Although, I've mainly only seen that in the WAYT threads... which is kind of a special child anyways.


I see a few people do it early into new Mac threads to get the auto sub (if they have that option enabled)


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## JayDog

well, yes... but not to the extent that is the WAYT thread... and honestly, was one of the things that bugged me about those threads after the change.

I enjoyed the WAYT thread before having to scroll past two pages of DOTs.


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## waldingrl

JayDog said:


> well, yes... but not to the extent that is the WAYT thread... and honestly, was one of the things that bugged me about those threads after the change.
> 
> I enjoyed the WAYT thread before having to scroll past two pages of DOTs.


It always goes back to the dots. 

I miss the +1000 post threads as well. It was much easier to follow then.


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## DancnDude

I like that the thread gets a new name after 1000 posts. It's somewhat more fun having a thread that changes names every so often. 

But I hate the flood of "dot" posts also. That's super-annoying especially since all those people could just subscribe without posting. I guess I could go either way on this.


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## Fofer

DancnDude said:


> I like that the thread gets a new name after 1000 posts.


The problem is, it's not the same thread with a new name. It's a new thread with a vaguely similar name, and no systemic link keeping them together.



DancnDude said:


> IIt's somewhat more fun having a thread that changes names every so often.


At what cost, though?


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## eddyj

As a regular in the WAYT threads, I hate having to roll over, and hate all the dot posts. They were funny the first few times, but they have gotten quite old.


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## pcguru83

Well, you guys make some pretty convincing arguments to one long, continuous thread. If 1,000+ post threads are allowed again, I'm anxious to see how I like the new practice.


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## DancnDude

Fofer said:


> The problem is, it's not the same thread with a new name. It's a new thread with a vaguely similar name, and no systemic link keeping them together.
> 
> At what cost, though?


I've often times joined a thread when it was given a new name. I ignored it previously, but I think the new name also does attract some people to click on it because it's new.

And just because we got a new server and upgraded version of VBulletin doesn't mean that the technical reason for the 1000 post limit is gone. The data is still in the DB and it's probably still linked the same exact way it was in the old version.

But like I said before, I wouldn't care much either way.


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## JayDog

DancnDude said:


> And just because we got a new server and upgraded version of VBulletin doesn't mean that the technical reason for the 1000 post limit is gone.


Well, looking at other forums... like AVSForum for instance... it's pretty clear that the whole 1000 post limit is completely unnecessary.


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## pkscout

I'm wondering why the 1000 post limit is only imposed on Happy Hour. I see two threads in the HD forum that have 2400+ posts, and those haven't been closed. I'm having a hard time understanding how this is a technical issue.


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## DVDerek

Even in Happy hour, the NFL thread is over 2000.


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## Jonathan_S

JayDog said:


> Well, looking at other forums... like AVSForum for instance... it's pretty clear that the whole 1000 post limit is completely unnecessary.


Well, that and the zipper thread in the underground which (while fairly low traffic compared to a WAYT thread) is up over 10,000 posts and still going.

But that said, I do like how the Xbox threads get cute and/or interesting names based on the current or anticipated* discussion topic.
*(for ex: an upcoming game)


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## tase2

Do we have any official word on this yet?


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## heySkippy

I've seen a couple other VB based boards recently put caps on the length of a thread for performance purposes.


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## Bryanmc

Any word on this?


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## Mike Lang

I think the posting cap is going to stay for now.


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## Bryanmc

Mike Lang said:


> I think the posting cap is going to stay for now.


Thanks for the info. :up:


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## bsnelson

pkscout said:


> I'm wondering why the 1000 post limit is only imposed on Happy Hour. I see two threads in the HD forum that have 2400+ posts, and those haven't been closed. I'm having a hard time understanding how this is a technical issue.


I think the key is access times and number of accesses. The WAYT threads get beat up pretty hard with both posts and views; for a thread that doesn't get "hit" that much, it wouldn't be as big of a strain.

Disclaimer: This is just based on semi-educated speculation (I'm a software engineer and I understand how databases work and a little about vBulletin )

Brad


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## tem

Mike Lang said:


> I think the posting cap is going to stay for now.


but no one has really explained why it's still necessary.


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## Boot

tem said:


> but no one has really explained why it's still necessary.


Interesting information here:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=116646


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## Hank

I'd like to re-visit this topic. The randomness of the thread splitting is really getting annoying. Some threads hit 1001 posts and are instantly locked, and other threads go on and on and on without a single problem - NFL 2007 (5,700 posts) and Official Mac (3,100 posts) threads come to mind.

I run the same VB software, on a single, much lower powered server (five year old Dell Poweredge 2550, 1.2ghz), and have hundreds of threads which are *much* larger (see photo below). This *never* causes a problem on the server.

The original problem on TCF was the sorely outdated version of VB software running which could not index the threads very well, and had known problems with large threads. Those problems have been *long* since solved and optimized.

So the artificial 1,000 post limit was instituted to alleviate old software, an untuned mySQL database, and old hardware. All of which have been updated to more current standards.

So I ask that if we're stuck with the 1000 post limit, that it's applied evenly across the board, OR it is removed OR at least increased to 5000 or 10,000 posts, so it's not so disruptive. There have been too many long threads I've missed because the old thread was closed and locked without any indication of a new thread being started.

At a minimum, instead of just dismissing it out of hand, how about we just try it for a while. If performance problems start up again due to the large threads, then we can institute a new limit. Be seriously, this is like have a 35 MPH speed limit on the interstate.


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