Open Mike, the idea is not to refresh multiple old threads on the same subject at the same time, which tends to confuse and split the discussion. Many of the threads people were refreshing, were already crosslinked to active threads. If a question comes up in one thread that has been answered already in another, give a brief answer and post a link to the other thread that answers the question, and don't refresh it.

It's really dumb when there are six threads on the same subject, and somebody posts blank or "refresh" messages to each of them - and then what happens is that some people post the same message in each of the threads because they don't know where the discussion is going to be. We had some of that this week with the Kennedy threads, because somebody insisted that we had to have two threads. Our general policy is that we should have no more than one thread at a time active on any given topic.

If you resurrect a single old thread by adding new information to it and thereby stimulating new discussion, that's a very good thing.

I'm not particularly sorry about embarrassing anyone by daring to question their judgment in starting unnecessary threads. If that's all it takes to embarrass them, they need to get a life - and in this particular case, the person didn't mind at all. It's not like I'm accusing anyone of some scandalous crime or something. We're all adults here. We should be able to have our judgment questioned without it being a horrible thing. Lord knows I get MY judgment questioned around here on a daily basis. That's what happens in real life - people don't always agree with you. Deal with it. And I posted my complaint publicly because there are more than a dozen people who are compulsive thread-starters and who would get all huffy if I questioned them directly, and they need to hear this message. I used somebody who isn't compulsive or huffy as an example because I knew he wouldn't mind.

And don't make a big deal of this. All I'm asking is that people use some restraint when they think about starting a thread, and consider adding to an existing thread instead.

Melissa, I'm the one who maintains the crosslinks, and I've had help from Jeri and Jim Dixon and others. Jeff designed the system. You'll find an index of the song crosslinks here (click), and in the QuickLinks dropdown menu. I wish we had a similar index of songwriter/performer and instruments crosslinks, but we don't. Some of the crosslink groups are so large that I've had to figure out logical ways to split them. Sometimes the song groups are a bit arbitrary, but such is life.
In the process of entering crosslinks, I also try to consolidate and index music thread information so that it can be found and used. I standardize format and titles and spelling of lyrics that are posted. The more threads there are, the harder it is to find information - and the harder it is for me to do my consolidation work. Oh, and along the way, I read all sorts of fascinating information and discover lots of songs I didn't know were posted here.

I'm also the one who combines threads - one message at a time. There is no easy way, which is why I don't like combining threads if they're over 20 messages long.

-Joe-