I've seen threadmarks used in other XenForo forums, and I've been wondering if they've ever been considered for implementation here.
They would allow the flagship threads to highlight important posts, accessible within a dropdown menu at the thread's header, which would reduce the amount of disruption to those threads by the common incidence of newcomers asking for the state of the field in the pertaining topic.
Many of those flagship threads are several thousand pages and being asked to read through all of that is a major commitment which many don't do, leading to debates about the same things every couple dozen pages or so. The quality of those threads being consistently burdened by tangential discussion, doomposts and ragebait, despite the best efforts of the moderators to maintain the thread standards, means that it becomes a slog to review past pages to find the kernels of valuable information within them.
I think only moderators would be capable of determining what posts should become threadmarks, so this is a commitment the moderator team would need to consider, but I believe the value of highlighting important posts through threadmarks would be of great benefit in mitigating repeat discussions on established information and on redirecting newcomers to information so that threads aren't frequently derailed by people asking the same questions.
They would allow the flagship threads to highlight important posts, accessible within a dropdown menu at the thread's header, which would reduce the amount of disruption to those threads by the common incidence of newcomers asking for the state of the field in the pertaining topic.
Many of those flagship threads are several thousand pages and being asked to read through all of that is a major commitment which many don't do, leading to debates about the same things every couple dozen pages or so. The quality of those threads being consistently burdened by tangential discussion, doomposts and ragebait, despite the best efforts of the moderators to maintain the thread standards, means that it becomes a slog to review past pages to find the kernels of valuable information within them.
I think only moderators would be capable of determining what posts should become threadmarks, so this is a commitment the moderator team would need to consider, but I believe the value of highlighting important posts through threadmarks would be of great benefit in mitigating repeat discussions on established information and on redirecting newcomers to information so that threads aren't frequently derailed by people asking the same questions.