Ending the Testing Page 3 Lock

[Stark]

Aside from it being redundant?

I would propose even more redundant mod busywork, but I know nobody wants change. It's scary, and efficient, and has less scope for embarrassing posturing.

[Count Chocula]

^ Ohhh, Page Snipe (TM) and snark! The tradition continues!

I vote again for the Page 3 lock to preserve the variety of Stark's contributions.

[Havok]

There is no reason to end the page 3 lock.

There is no reason to continue the page 3 lock.

[Stark]

We need more mods in-charcter in this thread. What good is HoC without the lols?

While the amount of quality lost is worth the derison it generates toward the powers that be, the arguments here are too good to miss. I'm going to save 'but we always did it' and 'I'm a cunt' for my personal use.

[Bounty]

Ah, RedImperator. Say about the man what you will, but he always knows which issues are too brain-meltingly simple for the board to handle sensibly.

1 The page three lock was a technical necessity.
2 Auto-prune removed that necessity.
3 Therefor, there is no reason to continue the page three lock.

Cue power plays and general douchebaggery. It's the SDN way.

[Bounty]

It is also very reassuring to know the mods have the time and inclination to religiously lock threads in Testing, but can't be arsed to properly mod AMP even when a regular contributor to that forum formally complains about it. I suppose locking page three of a joke thread on its way to auto-prune is far more important than keeping a semblance of competency in any of the 'serious', 'proper' forums.

[General Zod]

We need more mods in-charcter in this thread. What good is HoC without the lols?

Clearly the mods are chicken.

[Lagmonster]

It is also very reassuring to know the mods have the time and inclination to religiously lock threads in Testing, but can't be arsed to properly mod AMP even when a regular contributor to that forum formally complains about it. I suppose locking page three of a joke thread on its way to auto-prune is far more important than keeping a semblance of competency in any of the 'serious', 'proper' forums.

'The mods' are not a single entity. Those who fail to act in indivudal forums, especially lower-traffic ones, because of real-life burdens are not necessarily the same ones who approach Testing the way Jason Voorhees approaches teenage discipline.

If you have an actual problem with a thread, and the mod in question is MIA, use the report function. It's guaranteed to page all of us, and the problem will get fixed.

End of line, motherfuckers.

[Bounty]

Since the AMP situation has been fixed that point is moot anyway.

[tim31]

I voted yes, but I want to see it increased from page 3 to page 6 lock initially, and review in six months time.

[aerius]

We should just archive every thread that makes it to page 3 into the Brotherhood of the Monkey.

[Shroom Man 777]

There is no reason to end the page 3 lock.

There is no reason to continue the page 3 lock.

[Losonti Tokash]

We should just archive every thread that makes it to page 3 into the Brotherhood of the Monkey.

Then I'd have a reason to actually look in there once in a while!

[Bluewolf]

Is there any real technical or practical reason why Testing pages beyond Page 2 need to be locked now? I mean we have updated board sofftware and this is not 2003

[Stark]

Well ITT we have had the sentiments expressed that Bean is a laughingstock (and we love him for it), Fgalkin is a cunt (and we love him for it) and Thanas is German (and we love him for it).

Aren't you conviced? Luckily, your opinion doesn't matter!

[Starglider]

Is there any real technical or practical reason why Testing pages beyond Page 2 need to be locked now?

No. It is an archaic custom. As far as I can see, the only possible purpose is to stop testing from getting 'too popular' and overshadowing the main forum. Which to be fair, is understandable; there are plenty of forums out there that consist of nothing but Testing-style drek and it would be disappointing if SDN started to resemble them. However if so, locking threads after 3 pages is a spectacularly inefficient and ineffective way to address that concern.

[Stark]

Indeed, it could simply be made automatic itself at post 74 or 51.

I find the uplifting of threads an interesting example of how SDN has changed over the years, and how the attitudes of many haven't changed with it.

[Thanas]

Well ITT we have had the sentiments expressed that Bean is a laughingstock (and we love him for it), Fgalkin is a cunt (and we love him for it) and Thanas is German (and we love him for it).

There goes my hope of world domination.....


More serious - Locking page 3 is a fun tradition. Remember when we managed to sneak a thread past page 6? That was fun.

[Stark]

Hey, popular Germans have a strong history of attempted world domination. Don't be down!

[Aaron]

Weird, I thought the board in general looked down on mindless adherence to tradition.

[Havok]

That seems to be the argument whenever anyone brings up 'well it is traditionally...'. They get dogpile like a motherfucker.

[RedImperator]

Well, since I'm indirectly responsible for this, I suppose I ought to weigh in.

To be honest, I don't even remember why we instituted the Page 3 lock. I became a mod in...'05, I think, and I think the policy was already in place by then. I have a vague idea that it started because people were making "+1" posts (literally; some people were posting "+1" and that's it) in threads. This was back when anybody gave a shit about post counts. I remember some mods (shit, I may have been one of them, for all I know) getting deeply pissed off that people were padding out their post counts with content-free Testing posts*. So that's probably how it started, and it's definitely why Testing posts don't go to your post count anymore. The auto prune was added....I think it was added because it was easier than occasionally sending an admin into Testing to delete all the dead threads. I can't be sure about that one, though.

But at any rate, if Testing posts don't go to post counts, and Testing automatically cleans itself out, then there's no reason left to keep the Page 3 lock. By the mods' own admission, its primary function is to provide a reason to lock threads for fun. Which, I gotta say, isn't much of a reason.

*This is before we learned how to make content-free posts in every other forum. The trick is to just agree with everyone else, and you're golden.

[Stark]

Oh Red, where have you been?

[Hotfoot]

Are the mods really that desperate for things to do that they fight to hold on to a pointless task?

Whatever happened to work smarter, not harder? Unless there's some sort of database reason to keep doing this, I say let it go. There are better things to waste your internet time on.

[The Romulan Republic]

Why the hell not? If the topic is interesting and entertaining to the point that people keep coming back to it, I don't see why it should suffer an arbitrary death. And I'm not even much of a Testing fan.