How do people like to receive updates to Major fires posts?

colin · Post by **colin** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 2:26 pm

I have chosen to post this in this forum rather than the "Major fires and incidents" sub-forum as this will be a discussion - if a mod or admin wants to move it to "Major fires and incidents" please do so.

So, now to the question :

How do people like to receive updates to "Major fires and incidents" posts? Why?

I think Edits do not generate a new entry in the RSS Feed - For me this can be a positive or a negative - depending on my interest in the incident.
Replies are automatically timestamped, removing the need for timestamps within the post.
Replies allow multiple members to comment about an incident and all discussion is then in roughly cronological order.

Other Views?

Helitak_670 · Post by **Helitak_670** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 2:35 pm

Editing does not reset the forum. I think it is best to edit initially on the ramp up of the incident and then post single post after that to capture the new message.

Post by **yorky** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 2:43 pm

Personally, I would think within the first few minutes, just edit it. Anything after that needs a new post.

observer · Post by **observer** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 3:04 pm

Would it be an advantage to create a new thread for each 3rd alarm fire? If we get multiple fires at once, the posts become blurred and people have trouble following which fire they are reading about. It also makes it easy to track a particuliar fire. Once the fire is over then the post could be locked.

Post by **gkoutlis** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 3:04 pm

observer wrote:Would it be an advantage to create a new thread for each 3rd alarm fire? If we get multiple fires at once, the posts become blurred and people have trouble following which fire they are reading about. It also makes it easy to track a particuliar fire. Once the fire is over then the post could be locked.

That is actually a great idea! =D>

G

Helitak_670 · Post by **Helitak_670** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 3:06 pm

Yes, but also could get out of control as well with multiple people creating post at the same time, so mods would have to be on top of it pretty quickly.

observer · Post by **observer** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 3:11 pm

no different to people createing multple posts at the one time in one thread.

kylep · Post by **kylep** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 4:37 pm

I'm in the camp of one thread per incident. Not really necessary to lock it at the end. But might be good to have an 'active' and 'past' sub forum.
Once an incident is 'over' move it to 'past' and any news/ images etc can be added. While in 'active' only incident updates are acceptable. Just one idea....

Post by **Zebedee** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 4:58 pm

kylep wrote:I'm in the camp of one thread per incident. Not really necessary to lock it at the end. But might be good to have an 'active' and 'past' sub forum.
Once an incident is 'over' move it to 'past' and any news/ images etc can be added. While in 'active' only incident updates are acceptable. Just one idea....

That idea has merit - as does the locking of a thread once an incident is over. By moving a thread into a "past incident" area, it wouldn't trigger a twitter post either.

And one thread per major fire could also be workable. As others have said, there's a chance that two or more people could create a new thread at the same time about the same fire. The only things I can say on that would be - I'd really hope that people would take the time to check first, to make sure there isn't already a thread that's been started, and if we do get duplicates, then threads can be merged. Until that happens, perhaps if people limit their updates to only one of the multiple threads (let's say for example - everyone picks the thread that was started first?) then it'd be easier to merge and clean up

This is something for the mods and admins to have a think about - give us a chance to put our collective heads together and come up with an idea that will hopefully work best for everyone. Stay tuned!

colin · Post by **colin** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 5:02 pm

I also like the thread per incident idea. Not sure that the threads need to be archived in different folders though. If they stay in the one folder they will pop to the top when someone updates it. Otherwise, as they age the will shuffle down the list....

colin · Post by **colin** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 5:05 pm

If threads do get archived, perhaps the archive folder could be calld "Final summary"

spartacus · Post by **spartacus** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 8:46 pm

Wasn't the one thread per fire idea done a couple of years back, but it just became one user posting a new topic for everything they'd heard.

WA Radio Scanner Users' Group