The Introductions Mega-thread is up to 179 replies. That’s awesome — lots of new folks, lots of welcomes. Big threads like that become unwieldy, though, and … no one is really going to read through them all.
Discourse has a feature where replies can be automatically deleted after some time. I wonder if that’s something that would be good for the big intros thread? It might make it less intimidating to add to (both because “hey, smaller numbers” and because your post is not preserved forever).
I’ve used this feature pretty heavily for guide-type posts here in Site Help & Feedback, but usually with a short (1 month or so window) and the intention of moderators “rescuing” any posts that aren’t transient corrections, comments, etc, by moving them to new topics. So this use would be new use of the feature, really.
Another idea might be to manually close the topic at the end of every year and launch a new one. That is, however a) more work and b) actually maybe more intimidating, because now someone has to be the first reply.
What do you think?
It’s fun! Let it grow!
The history is actually important. Keep it!
Do the manual one-per-year thing.
Keeping it automatically tidy seems good.
I’m not sure.
I don’t care! Why are you asking me!
0voters
If you do think the auto-delete feature should be enabled, what should be the threshold? (Multiple choice — pick the ones that seem okay to you.)
One month
Six months
One year
Two years
Three years
Other (I will explain)
0voters
If you do think the auto-delete feature should be enabled, what should be the threshold? (Single choice — pick the best.)
Building on that idea, how about once per Fedora cycle? (ie, every 6 months). Then someone might say “Hey, I joined back in Fedora 33 times” and then you just have to look for the archived Fedora 33 introductions thread to find their introduction?
Hey @sampsonf — would you like to take ownership of doing this? It’d be great to have it not depend on me, and I think your idea is great.
I’m happy to add you as a moderator for the The Water Cooler category, too, if you like (so you can manage these threads more easily, and whatever else to help) — or as a general Fedora Discussion moderator, if you’re willing to help.
I would really like if some kind of clean up mechanism is introduced, whether it’s the one @sampsonf mentioned or another, because it would make me feel better about chiming in after introductions if folks ask where they can help.
For example, there was I think a cloud architect who I spotted asking what he could help with, so I thought the Fedora Cloud team would be a great one to point him to. However, my options were to try to DM the person (which would have to be in Matrix assuming they even set that up yet) OR have the conversation right there in the thread. Since we don’t have DM’s turned on for the forum, I was unsure of how to help that person.
If I knew that threads would either automatically be cleaned up or be swapped every month, I would feel better about having those little conversations in the threads to help people along their path to potential contributions. I would know I’m not cluttering the introductions thread. It would also encourage me to check it more often because now it’s more actionable if I spot someone I can help, whereas now there’s not much I can easily do.
Edit: Seems like folks do that anyway, so I guess I’ll start doing that also.
Yeah, actually — thanks for articulating one of the reasons I think it’d be nice to have shorter topics. More room for actual response and conversation rather than feeling a little like a 1990s website “guestbook”.
Site Help & Feedback, but usually with a short (1 month or so window) and the intention of moderators “rescuing” any posts that aren’t transient corrections, comments, etc, by moving them to new topics. So this use would be new use of the feature, really.
