[As most RR readers have seen, the sandbox 'all topics welcome' forums (fora?) in these pages have been more than well received – their comment streams quickly fill with multiple topic threads discussed among multiple participants. Recently these sandboxes have begun 'filling' more rapidly – e.g. the 1jun15 sandbox garnered over 200 comments in three days. This has given rise to a growing concern of mine about the readability of very long comment streams containing several live threads. Fortunately, most commenters have started using name/time tag referents to point readers to which of the preceding comments their current comment addresses. (However, some still believe that their particular thread is being so closely followed by everyone that no such provenance pointers are needed – hubris?)
So I wonder if perhaps readability would be enhanced were RR to implement categorical sandboxes – national policy, local issues, foreign policy, climate change, science, education, … ?? While that approach MAY focus discussions and make them more readable, it would also detract from the apparently pleasant melee or potpourri of thoughts that readers now experience as they revisit the comment stream to have their interest piqued by some new comment/er. Easiest would be not to 'fix' what seems to work, and to just open new sandboxes whenever the comment streams grow beyond a hundred or so. Anyway, I invite a discussion and your thoughts on the matter. gjr]
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