[Scotty]

Keep in mind that every thread we add, no matter how worthy, will dilute the value of every thread in that section.

This sentence makes no sense.  That is not how quality works.

[NGTM-1R]

This is necessary so that the immediate excitement surrounding the thread can die down, allowing it to be more objectively evaluated on "yes, this is a worthy and timeless thread" versus "no, although this was a cool thread at the time, it is nothing special six months later".

One way to tell if a thread is a classic is by whether people are still referencing it, or posts covered in it, in a non-"this must be in the classics" manner, months later.

I direct you to the allcaps thread being included well within this timeline and hasn't been referenced since in other threads. (Except for resulting in an immediate splitlock.) Many of the original threads are of dubious relevance to anything with most of the posters in them leaving back when I joined, or before, and I've been here...jesus, seven years? Longer? They never managed to meet the reference criteria either. Any cultural impact or influence burned out ages ago.

Also even by this standard you've clearly failed to include multiple threads which met the criteria and have arguably contributed far more than the majority of the threads currently in the archive, such as Kazan's being lured into arguing against the Clangers which got referenced for two or three years after, or Goob Hates Us All, which still gets the occasional reference.

There are number of worthy threads in the Classics section.  The fact that there haven't been any new ones in two years has no bearing on that.  And there's no policy that says we must continue to add threads to the Classics.

There's no policy that says we must keep the Classics either, and HLP has eliminated boards which are not maintained before. If you want to create some random project and just allow it to rapidly die off, well, that's pretty normal around here but it's still a remarkably dick thing to do.

Seriously, the Classics section wouldn't have passed muster as a hosted campaign. It'd be gone by now.

Keep in mind that every thread we add, no matter how worthy, will dilute the value of every thread in that section.

Maybe if you mean monetary value via enforced scarcity, but I'm hoping not. Otherwise, this is patently ridiculous. That's saying that every post causes HLP to continue its infinitely long approach to zero valuable content; every page of a book makes it worse; every time someone speaks it reduces the meaning of everything they have ever said. This is clearly not the case.

[headdie]

Cables too thick

the truth

[Scotty]

If including new threads devalues the entire mass of the Classics, it's only by comparison, because the majority of threads in that section are not (or no longer) funny, helpful, or meaningful.  If "Look at the Pheropods on her, boys!" is inherently devalued next to HLPX-COM, it's because it's not a good thread, not because HLPX-COM is bad enough to make the entire section worse.

[Polpolion]

****ing batman. it's all his fault.

[Droid803]

Cables too thick

the truth

if anything, this.

[Goober5000]

This sentence makes no sense.  That is not how quality works.

Of course it makes sense.  Top 10 lists are referenced all over the place, and people are often encouraged to find out more about the things on the list.  Top 25 lists have many more choices to pick from, so that people are less likely to want to see them all.  Top 50 lists are likely to cause a person to say "bleh, can't I just learn about the top few of those?"  And if the Classics board ever gets to two pages, how many people are likely to click over to the second page?

I direct you to the allcaps thread being included well within this timeline and hasn't been referenced since in other threads.

How clever of you to take my "one way" criteria and construe it to mean "the only way".  The allcaps thread is relevant because it was a massive in-joke and referenced a trend that was pervasive throughout the forum.  And people still post ALL CAPS comments from time to time, not only in that splitlocked thread.

Many of the original threads are of dubious relevance to anything with most of the posters in them leaving back when I joined, or before, and I've been here...jesus, seven years? Longer? They never managed to meet the reference criteria either. Any cultural impact or influence burned out ages ago.

Shall we then toss out Gulliver's Travels because it's no longer culturally relevant?  Or Uncle Tom's Cabin?  Or The Tale of Genji?

Also even by this standard you've clearly failed to include multiple threads which met the criteria and have arguably contributed far more than the majority of the threads currently in the archive, such as Kazan's being lured into arguing against the Clangers which got referenced for two or three years after, or Goob Hates Us All, which still gets the occasional reference.

In your eagerness to argue, you seem to have failed to notice this.  As for Goob Hates Us All, it's not a deliberate omission, it just didn't occur to me to include it.

There's no policy that says we must keep the Classics either, and HLP has eliminated boards which are not maintained before. If you want to create some random project and just allow it to rapidly die off, well, that's pretty normal around here but it's still a remarkably dick thing to do.

Seriously, the Classics section wouldn't have passed muster as a hosted campaign. It'd be gone by now.

The Classics section isn't a project.  It's an archive.  Generally, archives aren't very active.

Also, HLP hasn't deleted a forum since we moved to SMF.  Most of the inactive projects are still around, just archived and/or invisible.

[Scotty]

This sentence makes no sense.  That is not how quality works.

Of course it makes sense.  Top 10 lists are referenced all over the place, and people are often encouraged to find out more about the things on the list.  Top 25 lists have many more choices to pick from, so that people are less likely to want to see them all.  Top 50 lists are likely to cause a person to say "bleh, can't I just learn about the top few of those?"  And if the Classics board ever gets to two pages, how many people are likely to click over to the second page?

So then, why don't you remove the threads in the Classics that nobody knows or cares about anyway?  Right now the majority of users weren't around for those events, and any sense of "culture" is comlpetely and utterly gone.  Nobody mentions them anymore.  Nobody cares that they exist anymore.  I challenge you to find a single reference to the "Pheropods" thread in the last five years, or how a page and a half of "*beats other poster with <object>*" contributes to HLP in any way, shape, or form anymore.

[Goober5000]

The Vasudan thread has been mentioned several times in the past year, let alone the past five years, and so has the Miss Vasuda Prime picture.  That's not even in contention.

It's valuable to keep those threads around even if most users weren't around for those events, because they present a view of the HLP culture from days past.  For history's sake.

I'm not sure what you mean by "beats other poster with <object>" though.

[SpardaSon21]

It's valuable to keep those threads around even if most users weren't around for those events, because they present a view of the HLP culture from days past.  For history's sake.

And Battuta ascends as Planet, HLPX-COM, and a massive teleportation threadnought aren't going to be historically relevant as a snapshot of our current HLP?

[pecenipicek]

This sentence makes no sense.  That is not how quality works.

Of course it makes sense.  Top 10 lists are referenced all over the place, and people are often encouraged to find out more about the things on the list.  Top 25 lists have many more choices to pick from, so that people are less likely to want to see them all.  Top 50 lists are likely to cause a person to say "bleh, can't I just learn about the top few of those?"  And if the Classics board ever gets to two pages, how many people are likely to click over to the second page?

****ing Americans.

Spoiler:

[/sarcasm]

[jg18]

Cables too thick

the truth

if anything, this.

I'd actually urge for that thread to not get included in The Classics, even if references to it are seemingly everywhere. It just doesn't seem right to me to permanently embarrass Aardwolf for a single bad decision he made.

[karajorma]

And Battuta ascends as Planet, HLPX-COM, and a massive teleportation threadnought aren't going to be historically relevant as a snapshot of our current HLP?

Given that I'd never heard of any of them except the HLP-XCOM one, I'd say no.

Hell, I'd even say that some of the threads in the Classics section aren't worthy of their current status, so I'm certainly not interested in adding more which are of dubious importance.

My view when it comes to The Classics forum is that if you are a current member of HLP, the forum is not for you. Anything in that forum is something you could find in a search if you wanted to read it again. The Classics is for future members of HLP, not us. It's for the people who weren't members of HLP when those threads were around but have since become members of the community and want to read the threads to get to know this place a little better.

For this reason it should either be threads you check out because you weren't here when they were current but are referenced all the time (I doubt for instance anyone is going to say that the Derek Smart thread wasn't a hugely important moment in our history) or because they're damn good threads worth reading even if you had nothing to do with the community at the time (Things like Axem's Wheel of Fortune thread).

The 4 threads mentioned are ones I'd either never heard of or couldn't be bothered to read despite already being an active member! Beyond people complaining that they should become classics, I've not really heard them mentioned in any way that makes me interested in reading them even now.
 So I'm going to need a seriously huge amount of convincing about why they should go in. Take the XCom one for instance. Why would someone not a member of this community care about what amounts to nothing more than a Let's Play XCom thread?

[MatthTheGeek]

Given that I'd never heard of any of them except the HLP-XCOM one, I'd say no.

[...]

The 4 threads mentioned are ones I'd either never heard of or couldn't be bothered to read despite already being an active member! So I'm going to need a seriously huge amount of convincing about why they should go in. 

This.

Although I'm known to consider GenDisc isn't part of HLP anyway.

[NGTM-1R]

For this reason it should either be threads you check out because you weren't here when they were current but are referenced all the time (I doubt for instance anyone is going to say that the Derek Smart thread wasn't a hugely important moment in our history) or because they're damn good threads worth reading even if you had nothing to do with the community at the time (Things like Axem's Wheel of Fortune thread).

Then, again, where the **** is Kazan vs. the Clangers, Goob Hates Us All, or hell, some of the Carrier/Battleship threadnaughts from GenFS back when I was new? The whole thing is so arbitrary as to be useless.

The Wheel of Fortune thread is roughly as valuable as a community-oriented Let's Play, maybe less. It says far less about us as group, as opposed to the participatory bits of the LPs. It's clever; so's Scourge's LP, for an example. What's the greater value of the FS Wheel of Fortune over Scourge's Let's Play, never mind mine?

[karajorma]

Then, again, where the **** is Kazan vs. the Clangers, Goob Hates Us All,

I believe your customary response to a question like that would be "learn to read"

or hell, some of the Carrier/Battleship threadnaughts from GenFS back when I was new? The whole thing is so arbitrary as to be useless.

The Wheel of Fortune thread is roughly as valuable as a community-oriented Let's Play, maybe less. It says far less about us as group, as opposed to the participatory bits of the LPs. It's clever; so's Scourge's LP, for an example. What's the greater value of the FS Wheel of Fortune over Scourge's Let's Play, never mind mine?

Wheel of Fortune is about FS. That makes it a lot more interesting to someone new to the community than any number of Let's Plays involving people a newbie would barely know (especially when some of them have already left by the time this user joins).

[NGTM-1R]

involving people a newbie would barely know (especially when some of them have already left by the time this user joins).

That would be a seriously invalid argument considering a number of the threads already in there which are composed of people nobody left knows talking about stuff nobody left cares about.

[karajorma]

I've already said that a number of threads aren't worthy in my opinion. I don't think you can persuade me by suggesting I add more threads I similarly don't think are worthy.

[Scotty]

With the criteria for the Classics section as given in this thread, I really have to ask: Has there not been a single thread in the last two and a half years that accurately represented HLP at the time or was important to the forum?  Really?

[karajorma]

Name one you feel was important then!

Cause if the ones you've chosen are really the best HLP has to offer then no, there hasn't been anything noteworthy in two and a half years and you should all be ashamed of yourselves.