Long Threads

[~UnknownBandit~]

Blegh. This is my first rant ever. I just get sick of it when somebody makes a pretty long thread that doesn't belong in either the screenshots, 'HS RULES,' or spam categories that nobody reads it. It is almost exactly like SW.net or basilmarket. People see a long thread and are intimidated because they have either the maturity of a kindergardener or the IQ of a pet mouse. However, if it is a short thread asking a single question less than 3 sentences, that topic will be Godly. It can be the stupidest thing in the friggin world, but it will have insane hits. For example, "Peanut Butter Jelly Time!" will have over 30 pages of replies, but anything else, even if it was Meant to be entertaining, is lucky to get even a single page of replies. Does anybody really know why this happens? Now, it sounds selfish I know, but I am reffering to [not just recently, but all time] any thread I have made that has been meant to be an actual novel, or book -call it what you will-. My point here is that I was wondering, why do at least 80% of forum goers have the attention span of a lightning bolt?

[Kygre]

Maybe because we're too lazy to actually read the whole thing? I really doubt that the majority of us do that though. What if the whole long thread was just about calculations and stuff. Only people interested in that would reply.

It's not about how long or short, it's about the juice inside the actual thread. Randomness seems to be a very popular type of topic which people will just spam in.

Like me. ;D

Is that a good explanation?

[Aethelgorn]

Are you talking about your fanfic threads? One of them has got 82 replies, I hardly call that people ignoring it.

The story you posted today hasn't got any replies I'll grant you but you only posted it this morning. I don't really get your problem, most of your threads have replies...

I imagine theres a lot of people here that don't like fanfic (me included) so you won't get replies from them for starters. Basically your stories are always going to be niche threads, not because we're all stupid or have short attention spans but simply because not everyone has the endurance to read it. Most people dip in and out of forums while they're doing something else (I'm currently writing my dissertation) so short fun/random posts are always going to win...

Oh, and your caps lock appears to have got stuck on at the beginning of that story you wrote. I'm afraid I stopped reading after that point :-)

[J&JBros]

I will read any length of topic, as long as it doesn't involve stat calculations of any kind. I hate reading math stuff on Maple Story. But you're right. We should all take more initiative.

[~UnknownBandit~]

My point was not a long thread with no good juices [like math threads], but any long thread whatsoever-- people seeing it and never going back again, not bothering to read it--. That one maple fanfic I wrote a long time ago did get 82 replies maybe, but that was over the course of a year. Once it got too long, people stopped reading it and it died soon after. And back then, there were more HS members. There seems to be a shortage of active members nowadays. People log in, post a couple times, and are never seen after that. Moreover, having a volunteer offering to read the entire thing doesn't really help (thank you, though). An auther would rather have somebody read his work out of free will and enjoy it, or even hate it, than having somebody offer to out of pity.

[slightlyoddguy]

Haha, I made a thread just like this back on the official MS forum a loooong time ago.

I completely agree, but I can't say that that happens here at HS. This is generally an intelligent community, and anyone that posts "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" in a thread is just gonna get flamed.

EDIT: Ah, so you wrote a fanfic eh? The thing about that is, a lot of our users just don't venture to that part of the forum often (at least I don't), or they may not have any interest in those types of things. It's not that it's so long that people don't care to read, people pass it over for other reasons.

[Kahogo]

I think it depends more on how much the community of the forum is interested on the topic. I've made some really long/intelligent posts on some really idiotic forums and gotten over 100 replies. Probably because the topic interested them. Maybe people in Hidden Street just don't like stories as much. But I am definitely certain that the length of a post will usually take away from the number of replies you recieve.