I've never seen that option and I did a quick search on vbulletin forums and can't find a plugin. Also I don't think it would work, google search doesn't index threads by posts.

Horses for courses..

Forum threads are generally designed for constant stream of free flow chats. I don't see how putting artificial limits will help in making it easier to find the 'goodies' inside a long thread. All it would do (I think) is to spread long threads to 500-posts chunks.

"Oh, I think we talked about that point in 'Gargantuan thread II or III.' ... 'or maybe IV'. Look it up."

If there are important bits that should be distilled from said thread, then it's best to be extracted and saved elsewhere (Wiki, bugtrack, etc).

Of course a better search mechanism is needed too, in case of TMO For the time being, using site:talk.maemo.org on google works quite ok.

Edit: Actually, if we make use of the number of thanks as a search (sorting) parameter; we may be able to easily display the more interesting/useful posts from an overactive thread.

USing that search on google is same as power search.

Many of those long threads are the result of merging...
...and that's all I'm going to say.

I actually agree with the point that huge, ungainly threads are a bad thing. From the beginning of this site, posters were encouraged to add to ancient threads, like football players piling on to injure a player at the bottom. This definitely causes a problem.

What makes it bad is that a newbie has to deal with posts that are just plain untrue, false, irrelevant. Maybe a correct solution isn't stated for 50 posts, and a newbie has to read and supposedly understand all the wrong ones to get to the correct one.

Or software has changed, and a newbie has to read all the posts that have nothing to do with the new software -- how is that helpful?

The Wiki is part of the solution. Good reading skills are part of the solution. Ignoring the long threads and just reading the ends of them is part of the solution. But I don't know a good, complete solution.

Wading through 1 long thread which you know ought to contain the info you need is much better than wading through umpteen threads without knowing which thread contains the info. Much more detrimental to the forums is the use of non-descriptive thread titles -

• "please help!" - state what help is needed on
• "help needed!" - ditto
• "can the n900 do this?" - do what for god's sake
• "can someone port this app?" - what app for god's sake

and other such nonsense. (NB these are just examples and not the actual titles of threads in the forum but are close).

So rather than having 1 thread for a subject, we're going to have 50 identically titled threads, all full of posts, not necessarily in chronological order.

This really would make the mod's lives a living hell. Rather than only noobs making duplicate threads, everyone will be doing it.

Let's not resort to insulting anyone or their proposals. We can discuss without inflammatory words like "stupid". Thanks.

EDIT: "daft" is no different, James.