I suppose this has been done to death, but if so I haven't smelled any corpses redolent of mortal corruption just yet ...

Anyway, what drives threads? Somebody has an idea to throw into the ring and duly does so. People respond and the thread rapidly but surely veers wildly off in some unintended (but usually interesting) direction totally unintended by its author.

Like this one will.

Then, after a while, they just "peter" out. Stop. Cease. Desist. People no longer post to them, and they are eventually archived.

Why? What drives it? I'm currently watching the thread I started on Rodent-Related Sayings. If no more posts are made to that thread for, say, the next couple of days, I'm picking that it'll die.

Comments on the back of a postcard, please ...

in some unintended (but usually interesting) direction totally unintended by its author.
This is always amazing me : I read once that anyone can reach any other one in 6 steps - I mean, someone knowing someone knowing someone...
Here it seems to me that it is possible in few posts to start from whatever subject and to arrive to an absolutely arbitrary other subject!
Ciao
Emanuela

In reply to:

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Then, after a while, they just "peter" out. Stop. Cease. Desist. People no longer post to them, and they are eventually archived. . . . I'm picking that it will die

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Lay dormant might be nearer the truth. Look at the thread on handles, recently revived after months in abeyance. I'm sure that like any good rat, your rodent therad will hang around, waiting for some unsuspecting, diligent "stranger" to stumble across it, and revive, or even revivify, it.

p.s. The answer to your question, "what drives threads", is, of course, 42.

Max concluded: p.s. The answer to your question, "what drives threads", is, of course, 42.

40 + 2?
6 x 7?
84 / 2?

I haven't seen any white mice, either. Slartibartfast isn't a user here. Quo vadis?

40 + 2?
6 x 7?
84 / 2?

According to the scrabble bag, the question was: "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?" Or perhaps, "how many threads must AWAD pass through, before words are forever gone?" Fortunately you are all spared my Zimmerman impersonation!

According to the scrabble bag, the question was: "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?"

Just the riposte I'd expect from a mediocre telephone sanitiser!

"how many threads must AWAD pass through, before words are forever gone?"

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind, the answer is blowin' in the wiiiiiiiind.

The answer to your question, "what drives threads", is, of course, 42. I'd rather say fortuitousness

have to agree with Max on this-- it's 42
its something you grok or you don't!

What drive threads, why do some go on and on, and others peter out quickly–

there are many factors at work, but what I have noticed is,
1) extended thread have topics that are broad– Streets ahead started broad, and then it became a cribbage thread. I have never played, don't have a clue about the game except it uses a cribbage board... So the thread be came less and less interesting...

2) some topics go off on tangents– and luck here, either the tangents are better than the original thread, or the thread soon breaks..
Fortnight comes to mind-- almost halted when tsuwm pointed out –Merkin– but went on to concepts about calendars– which make some sense– a word about an expression of time, goes off to discuss our concepts of time; when does a week start–, weekends, and then on to how the french express time and even to the french practice of policing concepts! (Isn't that what they are doing when they attempt to block words?)

H, the ___ who ___ a 1000 ____, suggested:

have to agree with Max on this-- it's 42
its something you grok or you don't!

42 ... grok ... I've heard of mixed metaphors, but mixed sci-fi metaphors - Adams and Heinlein sounds like a law firm.

>almost halted when tsuwm pointed out...

just like to say that... wasn't trying to stop a thread... merely pointing out that this usage should be muzzled...
joe muttered haltingly.

joe muttered haltingly

more muffled laughter from stage left!

oh i didn't think you were--- i had come across the word, but had forgotten it--well, its not a word you normally use in conversation--well not one i usually use in converstion and when i read the defination... well i felt for faldage, and didn't quite know what to say, and was-- (congratuation were in order-- an i failed to notify you--) stunned into silence!

i actually came across the word on my son's web page--unfortunately no longer running-- it was www.qz.to-- and got underway when congress- in defiance of first amendment tried to ban "pornography" from the net...
qz was a free X rated web page...

occationally a young whipper-snapper would blush when they found out i was familiar with the site-- and stunned when i spoke proudly of my son's efforts... somehow, they expected some one their mothers age to be an old foggy!

do you remember the song from Hair? (why do these words sound so nasty?) most of the "nasty words" were new to me, and such fun looking up! (but i was so young then!)

of troy said: i read the defination..well i felt for faldage

I certainly did not know that meaning. When I use that word I mean it in the sense that was referred to in the comments on Lyndon Johnson. I'll try not to use it on this board due to the large number of people for whom it does have that unfortunate connotation, but I doubt if I'll stop using it in situations in which I feel the audience is exclusively US'ns. For us it does carry a connotation of raw frontier England ain' our home country mystique.

I did not feel shot down from tsuwm's revelation, simply informed.

I apologize for any offense I may have unwittingly caused, but it's a little like the problem encountered by speakers of one form or another of South American Spanish using words that are totally acceptable in one country and grossly impolite in others.

PS

Ms. of troy. I just recently discovered that you are Herakles' half sister.

Our own Excellent Chinese Gooseberry says: 42 ... grok ... I've heard of mixed metaphors.

Does this qualify as a metaphor? Seems to me to be nothing more than multiple classical references.