Fair enough. In fact, yeah, I agree.
For me, and 20+ years of being a top poster of a very well managed and basically self moderated forum, I think forums are better when content is streamlined, and older threads regularly get bumped to add fresh content. It makes for a more engaging forum, and readers will still see the lastest posts first, but then will have additional pages of related content to dive into. On this other forum of mine, one of the big things the creator/admin stresses is...1. before ever starting a new thread, do a search for related content first and add your post to existing threads when applicable. 2. consider new threads of importance...20x moreso than a single post. Ask yourself if it is "thread worthy". (Do you think it will be engaging enough to warrant several pages of replies?) General musings are not threadworthy, and that's why most forums have a thread similar to our "mundane thoughts" thread. In the past year, there have been at least 4-5 threads for articles about big fish being caught. They could have easily all been in one single thread w/ a simple search, then adding to the existing thread. It also makes for better (deep dive) reading when you have everything all in one place...and typically becomes more engaging and gets more replies. A splintered forum full of repedative threads just buries content! Same w/ Jag's countless threads for vintage instrument ads. If they were all in one single thread titled "Vintage instrument ads", then you'd have an entire index of them at your fingertips. What starting a new thread every time does is bury other content onto page 2,3,4,5 of that section of the forum...hardly allowing for the casual member to ever see it if they missed it the first go round. What you should strive for is having threads that last for pages and pages. Let Facebook be Facebook. That's not what information seeking/ information giving/conversational type forums are for. A fish thread is fine. 5 similar ones is not. The site's search function is your friend, and should be exhausted before EVER starting a new thread. That's how forums are kept neat, easier (and much more informative ) to browse...and it makes the job of the mods 100x easier.
Just my 2¢
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