Dead posts? What can and can't be done...

**zero2xiii** · June 13th, 2013

Hay all forum admins and moderators,

Something I have noted recently is that people (esp people with low bean counts) tend to open a new thread, ask a dull or very little information question and then never return...

Now my question is: Can something be done? Could we maybe report such threads after (only as example) 7 days of in activity so it can be removed? This will help us, and the people lead here by google, not finding a bunch of dead posts with no solution.

A recent example can be:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...0#post12688110

I am talking about a situation with no reply from the OP, not necessarily a post that died after a few replies.. although those are also a huge headache when searching but not as much since most of them do at least give SOME direction and things to try to clear up an issue.

Maybe I might be the only person whom this "thing" is bugging, but if not, can something be done or is it best to "shut up and move on" past it?

I feel the community (the CORE of ubuntu and opensource!) can contribute in this manner, not just add more work for the forum staff.

Kind regards,
Zero2XIII

**Iowan** · June 13th, 2013

ABT is an interesting forum - some of the questions asked are WAAAY over my head., some are about an obscure program, and some are by beginners who have not learned netiquette. Of course, there is the occasional spammer who has carefully concealed his/her mischief. The tough part is figuring out which. It's possible that after 2 hours, the OP gave up and went elsewhere, but sometimes life gets in the way. It would be disappointing to have my thread closed because I got called away for a few days. Some folks give a thread a week before they bump it. You are welcome to report dead threads, but I can't guarantee that staff will close them. One of us might respond to breathe life into the thread.

**zero2xiii** · June 14th, 2013

Hay,

Yes I do understand the "Life got in the way" bit, however, lets say after 2 weeks, or even a month?

I have subscribed to SO many threads that went no where, now I just keep a few open in my tabs...

But thanks for the reply, I'll grit my teeth a bit.

Cheers

**SeijiSensei** · June 14th, 2013

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1927042

After a brief period where this problem seemed less frequent, it is happening quite often again in the past few weeks.

I don't bother to subscribe to threads any more. I just use "New Posts" and look for responses by searching in Quick Links for all my posts.

**zero2xiii** · June 14th, 2013

SeijiSensei,

Yes.. I whole heartly agree... That and the fact they supply NO information what so ever... My response to that was to create my "help us help you" thread... Yet... No one seems to bother..

Sigh.. Some people take for granted what we, the community, give...

Alas I hope things will brighten up, but the commercializing of ubuntu is not helping at this point...

Sigh...

**cariboo** · June 15th, 2013

This is a fairly new phenomenon, it seems may new users feel entitled to an answer, no matter how little information they give, and if they don't find an answer in thread when they do decide to come back, they usually rage quit, and then tell everyone how crummy the support on the Forums is. There isn't much you can do about it, in most cases if there really isn't enough information in the post to make a guess at what it is they want, I usually ignore it for the time being, and try to come back a while later to see if there are any updates.

**zero2xiii** · June 15th, 2013

Yea...

Alas, some people expect the world to turn at their voice.... text...

awell. Just wondered if we should report those "dead" posts or just ignore them, seems like ignore is the way to go.

Cheers