One single Taobao thread?

[Shy Violet]

I vote sub forum I think 1 thread for Taobao would get really big and confusing really fast. I like having separate threads for each pony that pops up, especially when it's something new spotted, I'd like to see it right away instead of sifting through tons of posts in 1 long thread.

[lovesbabysquirmy]

But... we're talking about ponies!  :-p  We didn't isolate the talk about buying G3s at retail from the discussions of pony collecting at large. 

I don't like Taobao but I don't like compartmentalizing the collectors into generations and themes.  Ponies yes, us together at the Arena - no.    Most people put Taobao in the subject line so if you are curious about that market, go ahead and read the thread.  20 pages long is nothing... the Dollhouse has threads go to 100 pages before they get archived.  :-p

[Honeycomb]

I don't like the sub-forum idea. Now we have 3 and I basically never read them, I always forget ... It was nice to see new swap ideas announced in the corral, now you miss them, only if you go to said sub-forum you can see them. I don't want to go to sub-forum after sub-forum.

[moonsugar]

I'd love a subforum to gather everything together in one place.

[hathorcat]

Ok - people so here is the plan.

1) No to the sub forum. It is not needed and it would not get enough traffic. We don't really want to separate things out from the Corral especially when we are only talking 3 or 4 threads every week. Trust me, you would all forget about it or get fed up with them being separate or they would end up posted in the Corral and then we would have to move them anyway.

2) No to one spam thread. Look at the Minty thread right now, it is a whopping 29 pages long - that would completely defeat the purpose of a spam thread if you had to wade through 29 pages to find new images. It also prevents us from getting excited and chattering in a thread about something as amazing as Minty. It's an understandable fact that people like being the first to post about a new find - its fun to be the person who spots something first and then starts the conversation; one spam thread means that is not possible any more because everything discovered would need to stay in the same place.

However, as mentioned in my first post, we completely see the need to have some kind of central focus. So how about this: we have a "master thread" which essentially is updated with links to the new Taobao threads. It could also use an image from each thread along side a link to the thread which first let the community know about the pony and the screenname of the OP.

The master thread can be stickied at the top of the forum for a quick glance through and then people can click to go to individual threads. If a pony becomes a release it can move into the New/Coming Soon thread anyway and if it doesnt it still allows a reference to the pony's existence.

We would make a note that a master thread like this will result in more threads being merged. Sometimes a pony is "discovered" several times and as long as the posts are far enough apart they will not be merged. However, we would ask that people check the master thread before posting as if a pony is "discovered" again after being "discovered" previously, the new thread will simply be merged with the older one.

[Galactica]

That sounds like a good idea!

[Marigold]

Thanks Hathor, I think that sounds like a good plan!