Sometimes a tmo thread gets immensely popular, and before you know it, it has hundreds of posts. The thread subject might be interesting, but reading all posts could be too time-consuming. How can useful information be extracted/presented from excessively long tmo threads?

discussion below - propose and/or vote for solutions here.

Possibly a stupid question - but how do i add a possible solution to the brainstorm? - logged in, but no button to add a solution? (Sorry never done it before, and not fancying watching a brainstrom video whilst at work! - yes i know, i should be working lol)

Scrap that - took ages, but a little yellow bar appeared

I fear the problem with flitering by thanks (or 'no thanks' if we used it) would be that people will thank or not thank opinions they agree/disagree with. Threads could thereby become very one-sided.

The idea of 'summary' posts which are marked and findable is brilliant except for the question of whose job that is, and when they're made. Would it fall to the OP? The mod? The first person to think the thread is getting a bit long? (and could the summary also be subject to biased interpretation?)

The idea of 'quick threads' would also be good, except they don't necessarily allow for the needs of developers who want to see the way something has developed. Unfortunately, it's not always easy to predict before a thread starts whather it will need a long discussion or a quick one.

How about a poster button to distinguish between 'I said something useful' and 'I was just chatting'? Some of those trheads get filled up with gossipy stuff, and the posters (me included) know we're just posting and not actually adding anything of substance. 20 pages down the line, you could filter out the 'I agree' posts that way?

like at digg.com, to name one? although meta-commenting comments worksforsome imho, like at slashdot.org. maybe the emphasis on thanking for usefulness and filtering by usefulness could put a treshold to popularity thanking?

i was thinking summary posts could be posted by anyone who felt like writing one at any given point, simply by checking a box at post composition.

another option could be to have one specific summary post in the beginning or end of the thread, editable by the thread starter and anyone he/she decides to add as a summary editor.

It's a slightly tangential idea, but my idea of human contributors extracting the best bits of tmo (and the rest of the Maemo contentsphere) could help.

However, it probably doesn't scale to the "tens of pages with about a dozen useful posts (and which dozen is constantly changing)" threads that this seems to be dealing with.

Is it possible to have a "useful" button that only counts for the post, not the poster? Perhaps a button that would add a thanks and a useful?

Then sort on useful posts. Just because someone posts a popular opinion/funny joke, the post may get many thanks, but not be useful to the pupose of the thread. As people read through the thread, it is easy to mark the useful posts and or thank posts. If someone wants a quick overview, scanning only useful posts would be better than scanning the thanked posts and filtering out the joke, etc that got thanked.

*edit* to clarify, in a "I have problem x" threads. Many people help the op and post suggestions on how to solve the problem (many which may not help). These posts get thanked (rightfully so). Other posts are thanked for confirming the problem etc. Some of these threads get quite long, and 3/4 of the posts have thanks. When a solution is found, it can be marked useful, as well as confirmation of the solution, or clarifications. Then filtering by useful, you get the problem(op) and the solution(useful) without all the trial and error inbetween.

i'll give an example where some creative thinking is needed: how do you find useful posts about screen protectors and cases at tmo?

atm, searching tmo gives you several threads, and especially a huge one with almost 500 posts. reading through the whole thread would be quite a task.

solution #1 to view only thanked posts would be one way of finding interesting/useful info from very long tmo threads.

i'm not convinced the thank-button would be overused if this function would be implemented, but in any case, can anyone think of other ways to find the interesting bits from very long tmo threads? (searching within a thread only works when you know what to search for)

How about a checkbox for something like "for the archives"? I think people are fairly objective about picking what information is worth saving. They are not objective about Thanks.

I'll post on this thread too a reply I made on this thread: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=52216

I have created this plug-in to sort posts based on thanks, according to last 24 hours, the week, the month, the year, and all time:

http://talk.maemo.org/thankedposts.php

Feedback welcome.