Thread length and potential issues

I think, if it’s possible using discourse, that some effort should go into creating a more traditional “paged” thread structure rather than the current continuous structure in place now, where the page just keeps extending and extending. My experiences with that kind of structure have all ended with the pages in question bogging down with lag due to all the crud that, essentially, is turned on and not turned off until the page is exited.

I don’t think it’s problem in the near future, but the “Welcome to the new I-Novae Studios forums!” thread already has 73 replies and the scroll bar is already getting pretty small going back only 2 days. I’m worried about what a similarly popular thread with images, video, and other such media might turn into with this structure, let alone the kind of activity you get on a typical Wolf Game thread.

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Well, the 73 posts use less memory than a facebook page atm. And I guess the problem would only be relevant if somebody decided to start scrolling down from the beggining on a big topic, but that would be the exception, since discourse tracks the last read post and starts from there. Or you can just click on the arrow to go to the end without loading the posts in between. There are plenty of ways to go around any problems that might appear in the future.

Should we make a new “picture fight” topic to test this?

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I don’t think it’s going to be an issue. I haven’t had any problems with the “Welcome to the new I-Novae Studios forums!” thread. Even if you wanted to scroll the whole thing it loads it in manageable chunks and the up/down arrows let you quickly go to the first or last post. Bookmarks let you easily access any posts in-between if you so desire.

I guess in a worst case scenario a moderator could create a new topic using the “reply as new topic” feature and just close the old one.