Just a thought...
The SymbOS thread is getting ridiculously long and, most of the time, runs several SymbOS related discussions at the same time. I've given up on trying to follow the complete thread ever since it became more than about 50 pages long. Not because the subject doesn't interest me, but simply because I got lost in all those threads-within-one-thread and could not be bothered to filter out the one posting i might have wanted to read between all the others.
Maybe I'm the only one who feels this way, but I'd say it is time for a separate SymbOS forum

2cts spent,
/me off

It is getting a bit messy. Especially finding something like the latest information about a driver or preview is difficult when it could be in a couple of dozen pages.

Ppl will still post in that one single thread tho. The idea was proposed earlier in that same thread. (*here*)

Might it be an idea to add the most recent state of affairs (drivers, features etc.) into that sticky SymbOS images thread?

We could close the current thread and open up a new one with the same title, but adding "#2" to it. That's quite common practice at busy forums.

hm.. I think someone's about to cry then

Normally a big project would have it's own forum where multiple topic are discussed in parallel. Of course, this being a retro project, big is always relative. On top of that, coders want to be coding, not running website. Let alone maintaining a forum. As a community site, mrc could step up here to provide this as everything is already in place. Maybe something like a "Community projects" section in the forum where large projects could have a forum for discussion.

What's stopping people to make new threads?! Anyone can make a new thread if they have something to say, So if you've got something new to report about SymbOS, you can make your own thread. Apparently nobody seems to want to, because everybody is posting in this one thread. I don't care either way (1 big thread, or a lot of small ones) so I stick with the majority and keep posting in the available thread(s)

To me the main SymbOS thread here is somehow very mailinglist like. The advantage is, that you have all information collected at the same place, and you stay informed about everything around SymbOS by only reading one thread. The disadvantage is, that you loose the overview if you don't read it regulary. Another disadvantage is, that you may not be interested in every topic about SymbOS but only in a few ones - but as there is only one thread you are still forced to read everthing.
Anyway personally I like the way it is right now, but I don't know the opinion of the majority.

What are the interesting parts of the long thread? The discussions or the outcome? How about another thread (sticky/locked?) with a summary of each page?

Like so:

page summary
000  start
001  ..
002  ..
..
139  ..
140  single thread discussion
141 ..

etc.

Cool idea! Will someone else help here? I don't have time for that this weekend, but during the next 1-2 weeks I could be able to do such a summary.

It all depends, we're hearing ppl say they want a forum with multiple threads, others like you prefer one single thread, I don't prefer anything in special, but I simply think ppl are going to stick to this thread. We might have to discuss things internally a bit..

There already is an idea to organise discussions of different topics. Separate threads! This seems to me like doing a lot of manual labour to organise something that remains broken.
Of course, people could just start creating new threads instead of using the existing one. Before you know it, you can rename "Development" to "SymbOS" anyway.

I'm actually curious how many people actually read everything in there. I usually read it when a few posts are added. But when it's 5 pages with mixed discussions I just can't be bothered to.

I also agree that it would be better to make it a separate category, which can have multiple posts. A new 'group' called Special or Community Projects or something sounds like a nice idea to me

Quote:

What are the interesting parts of the long thread? The discussions or the outcome? How about another thread (sticky/locked?) with a summary of each page?

Hm, that sounds like

• a lot of work to set up
• a lot of work to maintain
• not a very convenient way to organize threads within a thread

And indeed, the first step would be to just have users use the existing forum like it is intended:

IF user wants to discuss any topic, be it SymbOS related or not
THEN just friggin' start a new thread!
FI

Until then I'm not gonna touch that SymbOS topic, sorry Prod...

[edit]Ah well, I might, but I'm sure as hell not gonna weed through 160+ pages of posts to find an answer to a SymbOS related question[/edit]