[murg]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Part of the rationale for posting individual threads is for future proofing with regards to the MR search engine, which defaults to showing thread titles only.

If someone is looking for science e-books (many of which are offered free as Resources on a permanent basis from various institutions), it's considerably easier for them to skim past search results that say (spoilered for length, this is the actual search results from page 10 of running the default for the keywords "free science"):

Except that a very small percentage of the books you post are science books.

And books tend to stay free for a very short period of time. So searching for them is pointless.

Originally Posted by ATDrake

One of the other parts of the rationale is to make it more convenient to spot and skim past offers that are Not Relevant To Your Interests®, and it's considerably easier to do that with only a 2-3 line thread title heading to scroll past (depending on how small your browser window is set and whether you're using the Liquid layout) than an entire post within a thread, which the above search result comparisons also demonstrate.

The same functionality exists using the 'go to first unread post' button in any of the sticky threads. There are some of the sticky threads that I check out, and some I completely ignore. And, many of your posts would qualify to be in those stickies (cookbooks being a recent example).

And your posting style makes it hard to discover the threads that are from other users. And pushes monthly threads (Baen monthly bundle coupon thread) back many, many pages, making them hard to find when you want to. In fact, activity in that thread has dropped off significantly since you've started over-posting in the forum, which means that your posting style is interfering with people discovering real discounts that they actually want.

Originally Posted by ATDrake

(Also, dedicated threads allow for easier noting that whatever deal it is now available in additional stores/regions and for commentary on it by interested MR readers who may have read it or have related questions without going OT in a megathread.

Exactly the same is available in the sticky threads.

And you can repost any free offers from the past that come up again. Or post a link to the previous post, and people can look for the comments themselves.

Originally Posted by ATDrake

I mean, did you really want to see that multi-post discussion on the merits of AmazonCrossing translated foreign language titles to go on in Mystery/Suspense/Thriller?)

The sticky threads are pretty clean. And it is very easy to skip any posts that aren't free books (just look for the lack of a link).

Originally Posted by ATDrake

This, incidentally, is why I've advocated for years that free ebooks (or ebooks deals in general) should probably be separated off into their own subforum, so it would be easier for people to spot audiobook/device/other deals/bargains/resources etc. while still making it convenient for people to quickly skim over ebook offers they were interested in.

They have their own forum: Deals, Freebies and Resources (No Self-Promotion)

The problem is that your posting style is completely interfering with the Deals and Resources parts of the forum. And this is not a justification for moving the Freebies into their own thread, many of the posts are deals, and I like to see the deals and freebies together.

Originally Posted by ATDrake

However, the posting style within Deals has always been left up to the discretion of the poster, subject to modly considerations, despite previous proposals to regulate the confining of stuff to megathreads, whether they simply be the freebie deals, or the specific Kindle offers (paid or otherwise) which people used to complain about cluttering up the forum, or whatever.

The problem is that your multiple posts uses the forum as a massive multi-tread.

Using requests from three and four years ago to justify current behaviour is just not on. The current users of this forum perceive that there is a current problem.

Having look at your linked thread, Arcdata now has a thread that they can post in to their hearts content. I have no problem with you having a thread (even a monthly one, although I don't see the point of monthly threads) to post all of your offers in, which allows us to look at it or ignore it, as we now do with Arcdata's thread.

Originally Posted by ATDrake

And for the record, we get considerably fewer official publisher promotional freebies (which I feel are worth individually spotlighting due to relative rarity value and the fact that they're generally "curated" offerings of the sort equivalent to what you could walk into a present-day bookstore and find on the shelf even if you're not personally interested in buying, moreso than the daily KDP slushpile trawl of everyone who can self-pub their shopping list nowadays) than we used to.

It's actually dried down to a trickle from the quantities they offered us as little as two years ago.

Using a behaviour that ended two years ago to justify a result, especially in internet terms, is so ridiculous a thing that I don't quite know how to address it.