Alexis did something good today, starting a thread in current events that can be used to discuss terrorist attacks in general.
One of the pleasures of moving here to Davos was being rid of thousands of old, forgotten thread topics, but after two days we already see how quickly they multiply.
If we give more thought to entitling the threads broadly, then they can be used much longer, we'll have less scrapped threads (often with good posts).
For example, the thread where we ended up making hundreds of posts about Venezuela was entitled 'Opinion: Venezuela squandered oil riches, now faces default
Now that is a really terrible title (sorry Booklady), but we had several good threads on Venezuela/Hugo Chavez and I for one thought that I had to focus writing in one thread and that was it.
When you can build on a thread over time, I find it also motivates keeping up on the news, becoming more informed on the topic.
This is also a very important feature for attracting new members, I think.
Imagine that you look at a new forum and find that there are page after page of old threads with very few replies. That is unattractive, it is an eyesore. It discourages new participants.
But if you instead find a place where topics are arranged/entitled in well-edited way, in a more intelligible way - and that the (fewer!) threads are developing over a longer time... That would be far more appealing, or what?
I think already we could have the thread authors look at the new threads they've made, and ask the moderator to change the titles, if in some way that will 'generalize' broaden the thread topics.
This doesn't mean that the titles have to be bland and dull, just that they should not be so specific that they exclude the next post on the same general topic: for example "The Russia-China-USA triangle: Spengler at his very best?" would be better if it was entitled "Spengler at his best, or his worst?" and became one longer thread instead of many over time.
The starting of new threads unfortunately has been a way to get momentary attention, but we saw in the old forum what it led to...
