DF Spoilers Child board: Theories

[Serack]

This suggestion has 2 parts.

The first would be the idea of a child board dedicated to newly proposed, rather mature theories rather than just general spoilerage discussion.

The second part of the suggestion is that each theory thread would have a built in binary poll of "Likely" or "Unlikely" and the result would somehow show up beside the title of the thread so that new visitors can see which theories have been deemed most likely. 

[sjsharks]

This suggestion has 2 parts.

The first would be the idea of a child board dedicated to newly proposed, rather mature theories rather than just general spoilerage discussion.

The second part of the suggestion is that each theory thread would have a built in binary poll of "Likely" or "Unlikely" and the result would somehow show up beside the title of the thread so that new visitors can see which theories have been deemed most likely. 

2 things

1: Your wording is a little confusing. Do you mean a area for new theories or mature theories?

2: I'm not sure if "Likely" vs "Unlikely" would be as good as maybe something as proof for vs proof against
Ex: There is almost no proof against Duck's Mab/Molly theory, although I don't know how likely it is.

[Serack]

2 things

1: Your wording is a little confusing. Do you mean a area for new theories or mature theories?

Mature because it's been pondered/developed/digested.
New because it's not the 95th time someone posts the theory that X pulled the trigger.

2: I'm not sure if "Likely" vs "Unlikely" would be as good as maybe something as proof for vs proof against
Ex: There is almost no proof against Duck's Mab/Molly theory, although I don't know how likely it is.

Likely vs Unlikely is a flawed way of saying you like or dislike the theory.  There are many ways you can determine how much you like a theory, but I prefer the metric of how likely you think it is to be shown true later in the series.  Someone else might vote based on entertainment value, or how well layed out a WAG is dispite it's improbability.  Ultimately it might be best to have the poll just be "like vs dislike"

Some further development of the whole idea:

I can envision a group of "bartender like mods" that can maintain a list of stickies which serve as a "Table of Contents,", each dedicated to a subject matter (for example the subjects listed in the table of contents of the WoJ compilation) and each sticky has a list of links to theories for that particular subject matter.  That way it is easy to determine if your new theory has already been voiced.

Maybe even each sticky could be dedicated to a group of topics and have the subtopics occupy their own posts on the first page.

Even if we don't have poll results showing in the parent forum (I suspect that would take the most coding effort for this idea), I think a theories section with a little structure like this, and some peer modding to maintain sticky table of contents posts, could greatly enhance the forum experience.

[Serack]

After discussion with Electric Butters I think I see some need for further clarification of my overall idea for such a theory child board.

The source for this idea comes from my experiences with the Theories sections of the now defunct website WoTmania where members would express their theories pertaining to the Wheel of Time.  Other members would vote Up or Down on the viability of the theory, and below was a section for comments on the theory, but the main point was that it was a place to enshrine unique theories which were indexed by topic.

The parent Spoilers section would still be viable for asking questions, general discussion, and also for discussing more vague, less conjealed ideas that might be in the process of being pondered, developed, and digested.

The "Peer modding" wouldn't necessarily be deleting any posts, just maintaining the links in the table of contents stickies.  If a repeatitive theory, or question manifested, it wouldn't necessarily be deleted by these peer mods, it would just not be linked to in the table of contents, thus allowing it to decay.

[sjsharks]

Or maybe a Display Case like section for theories that have a lot of backing, or everyone should know. Stuff like who supplied the belts