Help me think this out please. How to implement these sorts of contributions on a stock discussion forum

[Monkeytime]

My forum is an investors stock forum. All posts per company are in one single thread. Threads are long and you have to be paying attention every single day or you get lost. The busiest thread is 15years old with 55K replies. It works and the members are dedicated. Now that we are on xenforo, we want a better management of different kinds of contributions. In particular is one which we've tentatively called "research".

Here is typically how it goes.
-Somebody replies with a "hey I found a new patent application". Puts in a link or description. And then we talk about it for 5 or 10 replies.
-Somebody replies about a new company announcement and uploads the PDF. Not really "research" since it's a press release, but again it gets posted and lots of replies go back and forth to discuss it.
-One particular investor always posts a quarterly report analysis. We all look forward to it, and then comment on his contribution. This is a recurring contribution, so mixes things up. Many times I've searched the archives for his name and past contributions.
-Somebody posts a deep analysis of appendix B from the board of directors publication. This is a real example. Here this isn't about the whole pdf, just appendix B only. Or something similar in another situation, i.e. not the whole event. But, just this one page gets analyzed and dissected so much that it becomes its own thing worthy of special treatment and labeling, if I can just figure out how.
-And then there is straight up research. Somebody finds a new scientific article that connects a medical discovery to the company. They post it and we reply many times before moving on.

All these above I suppose could just easily be thread in a new blank forum, and then everybody starts their own thread for each. But, is that the best I can do with the tools available to me with xenforo and addons? I can't sort out if the XF resource addon is right for this or not.

And then to confuse again, this is a very common issue and wonder if it's different than above.
Several members have made their own charts or collection of facts or spreadsheet, and they often update it over time and repost. Then they repost it with updates. And then again, and again. It's the "come back and update this thing that I've contributed before" aspect that has me tripped up over all the examples above. How to treat these?

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So, what about the Resource addon? I've gotten use to it since our launch 4 weeks ago to find addons here. But, I just can't tell if it's right for this more informational gathering and posting forum. Comments please.


Because of the long single thread nature of my forum, two things I found are...
1. Threadmark Pro addon by Xon has caught my attention. It seems particularly suited for long threads. I read the description again while writing this post, and it just seem ideal. But, I'm concerned my bias 'to hold on to my single threads' is getting in the way instead of embracing a modern approach.

Threadmarks Pro [Paid]

Installing now....12m posts in the forum. Rebuilding the "post word count" is taking a while ;) My forum has hundreds of vehicle build threads....dozens have over 2000 posts per thread, resulting in over 100 pages of content. Excited to see this in action :)

xenforo.com

2. A facebook style inline reply addon. Like this one sample forum. This is quite attractive looking, and immediately upgrades our single thread look and feel.

What are you listening to? - with comments

Use Case #1) This is to demonstrate how comments can be useful to make things more organized when you can post a comment under a reply. --------------------- I'm sure we've all seen this topic somewhere on the net before, but I've never seen it here. So ... what are you listening to? Post your...

ultraweb.co

The combination of both 1 and 2 could be a solid approach. But I want to hear from the greater minds here about about if this content is suited for maybe XF's resource mod, other new threads coming in 2.2, or something else?

Thanks all

 

[sbj]

How many companies to do you have?

The "1 thread per company" approach is not very well imo. For all the examples above, people should create a separate thread each time. That is the only way of having a meaningful discussion going on.

First of all I would use prefixes for each type of discussion like "patent application", "company announcement", "report analysis", "deep analysis", "research" and so on. So this helps to categorize what kind of a thread it is. Prefixes are very important, I can't think of a good forum without prefixes. It helps you to see quickly what the thread is about without visiting it.
Sadly the core XF only allows you to have 1 prefix for each thread but I find it very important to have multi prefixes @Xon : https://xenforo.com/community/resources/multi-prefix.6281/

Secondly, what to do with the companies, how to categorize them? I personally would go with custom thread fields (the alternative are tags). Say you create a thread field called "company" as a dropdown one. In the dropdown list you enter the company names. And then you force people to choose a company when they create a thread. This way all threads which belong to "company ABC" will have the field "company ABC" saved as a choice. This addon will help you to filter those threads when needed @AddonsLab : https://xenforo.com/community/resources/thread-filter-by-addonslab.6034/

For the existing long threads the threadmark addon is the only sane solution unless you have the time to dissect those long threads and break them into multiple other threads.

 

[arn]

#2 is not going to be a good solution. Those comments aren't the best for long running discussions like you are talking about.

It seems like busy threads could get their own subforum.

arn

 

[Monkeytime]

Replying to SBJ.

Thank you. This write up about prefixes in the context of my concerns really helps internalize the value add of prefixes.

Thread tags is still confusing. Can you elaborate. Right now every company is in its own forum, but only one thread inside. Now that we are on xenforo for 3 weeks and things are stable, time to improve.

I'm sold on the idea of prefixes because it's built in, but give me some comments on the ThemeHouse Facebook comment add-on and Xon's threadmark.

And the big question, is the official XF resource add-on useful for my use cases?

 

[sbj]

Thread tags is still confusing. Can you elaborate. Right now every company is in its own forum, but only one thread inside. Now that we are on xenforo for 3 weeks and things are stable, time to improve.

What I described is thread fields, not tags. Tags are different. But since every company is in its own forum, you don't need thread fields or tags. But that is why I asked how many companies you have. If you have had hundreds, then you wouldn't have for each its own node (forum). A thread fields solution would be a better choice if you had hundreds of them. But you don't need it as it seems.

I'm sold on the idea of prefixes because it's built in, but give me some comments on the ThemeHouse Facebook comment add-on and Xon's threadmark.

The comment addon is not from TH as far as I can see btw.
And it depends on you if you want that kind of style in your forum or not. It is a preference thing. If you want to keep the discussion short and small, that addon would be useful. Otherwise just stick to the normal layout.

The threadmark addon is the only option to somehow make very long threads usable. Still not great, but in your case needed I believe.

And the big question, is the official XF resource add-on useful for my use cases?

I don't believe it is. You can always purchase it at a later time if you think you need it.

 

[beerForo]

I use prefixes heavily. Think of them as sub-categories.

I have a limited amount of forums and ZERO sub-forums.

Basically I use prefixes as the subject of the thread. So you have:

Title:
Subject: (These are your prefixes, create the popular subjects of this forum category)
Body:

 

[Monkeytime]

If you have had hundreds, then you wouldn't have for each its own node (forum)

Uh oh. That was my plan. Previous forum software it was one forum, with hundreds of threads, each thread devoted to one company. I wanted to allow for more flexibility so when I launched on XF 3weeks ago, I started with the idea of one forum node per company. Specificaly, I'm talking about 'add new node' and pick second option down, 'forum'. Right now only one company, but I was planning hundred+ forums.

What you said has me concerned now. Why shouldn't I do this? Performance reasons? What am I missing?

 

[sbj]

Check out reply nr. 8.
Yes, performance reasons.

How should I organize this? Need input..

Okay.. So I'm working on a new project, and I need some help on the best way to organize my board game forums. I have about 15 standard forums, which is visible on the forum index. That's ok. Then comes the database of board games, which will consist of thousands of games eventually. Each game...

xenforo.com

 

[Monkeytime]

I use prefixes heavily. Think of them as sub-categories.

I have a limited amount of forums and ZERO sub-forums.

Is the mindset of prefixes a pre-selection for future presentation? Or just some internal categorization? I'm missing something. Is presentation to the user dependent later hinged somehow on prefixes.

What is an example of a 'sub-forum' in your context?

 

[beerForo]

Categorization and discovery.

I also use a filter bar at the top of each forum.

[SC] Prefix Filter

Description : This add-on allows you to add a prefix filter when browsing your forum. Feature summary : Options : Label color : Red Green Olive Light green Blue Royal blue Sky blue Gray Silver Yellow Orange Error Hide prefixes not used Hide...

xenforo.com

 

[Monkeytime]

unless you have the time to dissect those long threads and break them into multiple other threads.

This was considered early on but for a different purpose, like breaking down the 18 years of history into one year each. But, what you suggest I think is breaking down into something that resembles the end game. Pull out that awesome patent find post from 4 years ago and the 10 replies that followed it from the long thread, pull it out into it's own thread were we can assign prefix. That's a lot of work, but I imagine if that locked thread just sat there as an archive, and we went at it one month at a time to pull out the gems, it could be done.

My question is, is there a addon that assists in pulling posts out of one thread to another and with batch options? We experimented at the sql level to split the archive, but that's the wrong approach here.

 

[sbj]

There is no such addon and honestly I am not sure how such an addon would look like. How should the addon know where to start the splitting and when to end?

You need to use the moderator bar, just like the rest of us.

One tip I can give you is to set this setting to 100:

This way each page inside a thread will contain 100 posts. So you can quickly select 100 posts at a time by using the "select all" tickbox.


So, say the pagination is this:

You go on page 1, "select all", then you go an page 2, then "select all", and so on. And at the end you move the posts. Quickest way is this way I think.