Someone please tell me what's going on!

[Kit Baggins]

Good Eru, I go away for the weekend, and come back to find nearly a hundred of my posts have vanished :confused: ! I had over 500 last week, and now I've only got 450-something :( .

What's going on?

~Kit :confused:

[Khamul]

One of the mods deleted the 3 word posts threads. Its not like it really matters though......

[Courtney]

Why did they take away the three word posts? Those were so much fun...:(

[Beorn]

I think it was b/c of three reasons: They took up a large amount of bandwidth (at one point, there were 3 posts per minute between the 3WPs and other 1k+ threads), they took up space (2-3k posts out of 62k), and they didn't follow any point. As I've said to Asha, some people may add something like what is in bold here, without considering the previous statements:

He went in
to the bar
and lifted weights

Another thing, that I now realize. Most of those posts were by 5 or 6 people...

[Talierin]

Yes, and also the mods couldn't keep up with the posts. 100+ posts a day on those alone would take up a lot of time to watch, not to mention having to watch the rest of the board.

Us the mods don't like being spoil-sports and ruin your fun, pointless as it is, but the threads were getting out of hand.

[Grond]

I'll add to this that I very tactfully tried to get my point across that a three word post was okay when everyone contributed to it once or twice a day but with people hitting it 40 times a day, it became a problem to be properly monitored. aka (someone had to stay on a watch it all the time). We (Tal, Anc, Cir, RW and myself) take our jobs seriously and I, for one, feel the need to see as many new posts as possible so they may be screened for content.

These types of threads will not be a problem if they won't be overused. :)

[Khamul]

Well, yeah I do see your points. Best safe than sorry.

[Mormegil]

It doesn't matter now as the post count is invisible again.YAY!!:)

[ssgrif]

I think that sometimes the three word posts are fun but in moderation. I would guess that most of the people posting to those threads 10+ times a day are only in it for the post count, and thats not so great. Means you cant measure the value of the individuals contribution to the discussion of Tolkiens works by the post count.

Shame but I think making the post count invisible is probably a step in the right direction.

:)

[Grond]

The post count issue was a minor consideration in the deletion of the thead. As Talierin and I have both suggested, the resources necessary to monitor and support such a post intensive thread a large; both in terms of Moderator time to review posts and in system requirements to process posts consisting of only three words.

Again, a thread of that nature if fine as long as participants moderate their usage.