[General Topics] quicksite:
This is really HORRIBLE Information design, and completely breaks the value of having state of the art software. It's regressive, like having forum software from 1985, and like putting children in a playpen and locking them up.

I don't like it at all, and I don't like new management running ripshod over the very STRUCTURE that exists. This feels very TOP DOWN authoritarian, treating people like pawns to be kept off the grass and onto the clean sidewalk. It's the community who create the value here, they/ we are the knowledge base. The offering here is content. The ad sales come from content. The intellectual property are ROMS and modifications made by people who do not make a dime from it. That's the way XDA has always been.

So being told now to confine a HUGE topic branching area into one thread is akin to merging the whole NETWORKING SETTINGS forum inot one thread.

But beyond that, it defeats Best Practices of Information Design and User Experience Design tenets embraced by standards upheld all across the world by the best of breed sites and practitioners of the architecture of any site.

Here's but one example: How would someone think to even CONSIDER the idea:

Who would think this? No one in the United States would think it, that's for sure. Thus, when I heard about it, then posted a thread about Simple Mobile, it makes very good COMMON SENSE that it become a new DATA NODE, a new topic node. (WWWD?) (What Would Wikipedia Do?) -- Answer: Wikipedia would for SURE treat it as its own unit of knowledge. So, now, where is that thread? Oh, it's just conveniently relocated to post #749 -- page 15 out of 20, just in case you were browsing from the start.

I could cite Jacob Nielsen. I could cite many authorities. It's just plain bad from no many sectors, but most of all it's rude and is contradictory to your OWN TOS

As clear as day:

General discussion

Anything that involves all of the phones and doesn't fit in any of the other fora.

and within that, if you REALLY don't feel that Network Carrier relate to cell phones, then there is this:

Off-topic Anything not related to the phones.

I would venture to say that people would much prefer to have a well organized SUB FORUM set up under OFF-TOPIC if it really offends so many sensibilities. But for god sakes, give people back their freedom to process information as they see fit, without a NANNY STATE coming in and combining into one trash pile what people say, losing all unique context and conversatuional threading. Because what you or someone else just did, bulldozing threads like crushing rows and rows of tenement housing without a care in the world for what conversational flow is going on, that's dictatorial. FWIW,

I also don't believe the reason being given, and I don't like when the truth isn't being told and people are massaged into some behavioral mode.

If the real reason is "The Site Management has decided we don't like having so much bashing of carriers in such open view of the advertisers on our site, such as AT&T and T-Mobile and Verizon and Sprint, then say so.

People are adult enough to understand this. It would make sense. But don;t hide behing some B.S. rationale. It's too obvious.

I don't blame site owners from wanting to shield such bashing from advertisers -- THEY SUSTAIN THE SITE. Which is why my suggestion makes sense, fold it into Off-topic, move it out of plain view. But this "solution"? It's exponentially a clusterf*** in useless data-clutter, vs topic-driven information design.