Thread-Branching

[imcool]

Okay, first off I want to explain I do not currently have a SMF set-up but I plan to in the near future, so I may not be aware of all the features...

So here is my idea:

When a topic starts to derail and go into a different subject, users of the forum can create a new thread for it, but to make it quicker and more official, a link will appear in the old topic, redirecting all unrelated discussion away from the original thread. This would help all discussions get maximum exposure

The link-box could appear where a post would, and there could be a "thread branches" area on the original post or somewhere else in the thread.

What do you think?

[Yonkey]

It's a nice idea.  Kind of similar to Google's Page Rank.  But who will maintain this link-box for each thread?  Moderators or Users?  Or will it work automatically by matching certain keywords from other threads?

[Joshua Dickerson]

imcool: split topic feature is pretty much just that.

[imcool]

The users would be able to maintain it, I suppose. There would be multiple postings that would take the same space as a regular post, but branch to newly created threads users felt it was necessary to create, and they would all be summed up in a "branched/related discussions" box near the first post.

It could be based on keywords in other threads, but I was thinking more along the lines of threads the users themselves create because of discussions that have started to derail the current thread.

imcool: split topic feature is pretty much just that.

hmm, well I don't know much about SMF's split feature... I thought split was a moderator tool that could cut out posts is why I made this suggestion. I will have a look at this feature!