Maximum Pages Per Thread

Fraize_Websleuths

New member
I manage a forum with decades worth of content, and there are some institutionalized rules our mods have passed down since our original vBulletin and Xenforo 1.x days that I'm questioning. Specifically, we have a rule that when a thread reaches 50 pages, we close the thread and spin up a new thread with #2, #3, #4 etc. appended. The intent being that threads with many pages are slow to load for our users that are still on rural dial-up speeds.

I think this practice hasn't been necessary for quite a long time, if it ever was. My own testing indicates there's no difference in load-times between a 2 page thread and a 50 page thread. Not for nothing, I think splitting our long threads is actually harming our SEO.

Our most-senior mod did ask an interesting question, though – is there a practical maximum limit to the number of pages a thread can have?
 
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I have asked members to cap long threads at 100k replies, 5000 pages.
I greatly appreciate the reply! Did you give them a specific reason? The page number property is of type int so the theoretical limit is over 9 quintillion in php, but perhaps there's a user-experience reason for your members?
 
What we do:
After 30 days, replying requires ticking a box, confirming they realize the thread is not new. Since adding that some years ago, 99% of people do not reply to those threads now. I know it works because people write things like "I was told the thread is too old, so I'm posting a new one". Their posts are not direct continuations of the original thread, often tangentially related at best, and a new thread was appropriate all along. In the rare case where it should have been continued, it's a simple mod action to merge.
 
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