If the problem is that no one will post in an open thread near the end of it’s lifetime, a silly solution would be to automatically create an open thread every day with 10% probability. Now someone considering posting has no reason to wait for a future day to post because the expected lifetime of a thread is always constant, and is ~10 days.
Better would be to have a single thread “Open Thread” where posts older than N days would be moved to an automatically created “Open Thread Date-Date” post.
An even easier fix would be to remove the end date from open thread titles. When someone feels like posting a new one they just do that. This is a sloppy implementation of the first solution.
How about overlapping thread lifespans? This way when a new thread is created, recent comments on the previous thread won’t go unread, and discussion can still happen there. A thread on Monday that lasts a week and a thread on Thursday does too, for example, with both threads pinned to the top and included under the Latest Open Thread feed on the side. I suspect this would be easier to implement than your second option. It’s more difficult to implement than your first and third options, though.
Overlapping threads are just an agreement of everyone to keep looking at old posts. This is harder to orchestrate, because it requires lots of people to change.
Point, but I did suggest several ways in which this could be encouraged (pinned threads, different stated lifespans, shared use of Latest Open Thread feed)
Reducing the visibility of the new threads could help too.
If the problem is that no one will post in an open thread near the end of it’s lifetime, a silly solution would be to automatically create an open thread every day with 10% probability. Now someone considering posting has no reason to wait for a future day to post because the expected lifetime of a thread is always constant, and is ~10 days.
Better would be to have a single thread “Open Thread” where posts older than N days would be moved to an automatically created “Open Thread Date-Date” post.
An even easier fix would be to remove the end date from open thread titles. When someone feels like posting a new one they just do that. This is a sloppy implementation of the first solution.
People will start a new thread just to bring attention to their post, while being immune to the criticism of “This belongs in the open thread”
How about overlapping thread lifespans? This way when a new thread is created, recent comments on the previous thread won’t go unread, and discussion can still happen there. A thread on Monday that lasts a week and a thread on Thursday does too, for example, with both threads pinned to the top and included under the Latest Open Thread feed on the side. I suspect this would be easier to implement than your second option. It’s more difficult to implement than your first and third options, though.
Overlapping threads are just an agreement of everyone to keep looking at old posts. This is harder to orchestrate, because it requires lots of people to change.
Point, but I did suggest several ways in which this could be encouraged (pinned threads, different stated lifespans, shared use of Latest Open Thread feed)
Reducing the visibility of the new threads could help too.