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Thread: Constructive suggestion (if possible) regarding old posts

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  1. #1
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    Constructive suggestion (if possible) regarding old posts

    I often see old posts that have sit dormant closed for "necromancing". Personally, I believe that by extending a forum search for people to look at old threads, you're essentially telling every memember of this board that's OK. I never agreed with closing a thread someone has a renewed interest in simply because its old. The thread will obviously contain history about the topic, and you're forcing them to start from scratch on the matter.

    That being said, I think it would be very beneficial if the UBB software could somehow automatically close the thread after X amount of months of total inactivity, making it read only. I think you should also clearly state in the CoC or the Forum FAQ about necromancing old threads because there isn't a shred of information regarding the topic in either place.

    Personally, I think in either case, its making more work for your staff and making the forums less flexible for its members, but at least this process would lighten your load up a bit and not waste a forum members time who has searched your site for their information, found it, only to have the door shut on them.

    Cheers!
    "Its easy to come up with new ideas, the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date." -Roger von Oech

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    Re: Constructive suggestion (if possible) regarding old posts

    Personally, if someone posts a valid question on a thread that hasn't had any activity for a couple of years, I will move that post to it's own thread. In a lot of cases the questions that were originally asked in the thread, are no longer valid due to the changes that have occurred since the thread was created.

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    Re: Constructive suggestion (if possible) regarding old posts

    but that completely kills the topic history when you do that. It ties no correlation about the topic and the users conversations which have surrounded the topic on the same forum together. Its really the whole point of having threaded conversation...

    I've been involved in a lot of really big support forums, I've only ever seen this done here. It really doesn't make any sense, and there is really no outstanding rule to close a thread thats old, so it gets perceived by many as an abuse of administrative power I think. Just my .02
    Last edited by toupeiro; February 22nd, 2010 at 02:32 AM.
    "Its easy to come up with new ideas, the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date." -Roger von Oech

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    Re: Constructive suggestion (if possible) regarding old posts

    If you could see the number of reports we get when an old thread is resurrected, you would understand why we close older threads, or move the post that was tacked on the end of one of them to a new thread.

    In quite a few cases it is usually a spammer that resurrects one of the older threads, then members that don't really pay attention add to it, then the spam gets removed and you're left with several posts that really have no bearing on the original discussion,

  5. #5
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    Re: Constructive suggestion (if possible) regarding old posts

    Quote Originally Posted by cariboo907 View Post
    If you could see the number of reports we get when an old thread is resurrected, you would understand why we close older threads, or move the post that was tacked on the end of one of them to a new thread.

    In quite a few cases it is usually a spammer that resurrects one of the older threads, then members that don't really pay attention add to it, then the spam gets removed and you're left with several posts that really have no bearing on the original discussion,
    Right, but spam is already against the rules, and rules against necromancy are no more of a deterrent for spammers than rules against spam itself. So, in the scenario you describe, the fact that thread necromancy is frowned upon doesn't really make a difference: the spammer still spams and the unaware posters still reply to the spam.
    I am aware of all internet traditions. | Getting the best help | Text formatting codes | My last.fm profile
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    Re: Constructive suggestion (if possible) regarding old posts

    Quote Originally Posted by cariboo907 View Post
    If you could see the number of reports we get when an old thread is resurrected, you would understand why we close older threads, ...
    I think you may have that backwards :
    forum members see thread get closed for "necromancy", so they get the message that "necromancy" is somehow undesirable behaviour, and so they start reporting whenever an old thread is revived.

    I can understand why you don't want to see resurrection of (older) troll and nonsense threads, or of taboo threads about why this or that mod suddenly disappeared, but by giving "necromancy" as a reason to lock the thread, i.e. claiming it's locked because of the date, not the content, you're actually encouraging forum members to report any old thread that got a recent post.


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