Closing old Off-topic threads

[Brown David]

As far as moving off-topic threads--one solution to that might be to have a few more moderators, each in charge of certain forums. These people would have the authority to move threads to a different forum if they are not on topic. Another forum I visit does this. And when a thread is moved, the title still appears in the original location. But when you click on it, it tells you that the thread has been moved, and provides a link to the new location.

More moderators would help to spread the workload on a forum as large as this. Way too much work here for one person.

Yes, that's how many forums that I visit are moderated. I think it works great.

Those extra moderators are mostly all volunteers taking time from their own life to do a mostly unthankful job. I couldn't do it myself, it would drive me up the wall. Hats off to them.

There is only one moderator here for the entire site? Wow, that's a big workload, too big.

 

[Dave G9N]

More than a couple of people here were bothered old posts coming being revived. The team (jmiller specifically) has installed a method of closing posts older than 30 days if they are known to be off-topic. This is better than the old way we did it, which was to delete posts older than a certain date. This way, if people do want to refer back to an old OT post, they still can (if they are members), but they can't revive the topic. This doesn't fix the issue some had that OT is done in other forums beyond Tales. When people do that, there is nothing to indicate that they posted off-topic, so as yet, we can't close those automatically.

This also has nothing to do with on-topic post revival. In that case, for example, the 2007 post that almost answers a newcomer's question but they need more info, can still be revived to flesh the answer out more completely than it might have been the first time. The other condition where that has important side effects, is the revival of an old post that was never answered or answered incorrectly. In this case, it may not be a newcomer, but a regular YTer trying to clean up older answers. The reason this is very important, is that people using the forum as members are the tip of the iceberg. People who are not members continuously ask the search engines questions and any of the technical tractor posts we've made in the past are what they get for answers. If those aren't valid, it's great that a member has gone back and corrected the issue for them. People using the search engines to ask tractor questions sometimes don't really want to be members of a forum (in my experience, some would be too embarrassed to ask a question publicly), they just need a quick answer for their project. The forums serve a lot more people than actually join and post, and all of your answers from the past are what is helping them.

There is a boat design forum that has a warning on an old thread that it is probably not a good idea to respond, suggesting a new post would be more appropriate. It also gives you the option to check a box to say that you understand and that believe that your response should still be attached to this thread. You can't post without checking the box. The warning is a box that appears just below the response is similar to the warning here that you have used a word that may be inappropriate or linked to a competitor's site. It only shows up when needed.

 

[cpratt]

There is a boat design forum that has a warning on an old thread that it is probably not a good idea to respond, suggesting a new post would be more appropriate. It also gives you the option to check a box to say that you understand and that believe that your response should still be attached to this thread. You can't post without checking the box. The warning is a box that appears just below the response is similar to the warning here that you have used a word that may be inappropriate or linked to a competitor's site. It only shows up when needed.

That's not a bad approach because then it puts it on the intelligence of the poster but it can be both ways. I don't know if there is something like that for this software, but most probably there is. I had that on the old classic view only you couldn't override it. The reason was that we had a person who was not bad or a troll, but just daily would pick out a very old post and respond to it. On that software, it would break things when he did it. Old threads were impossible to make work even the reply would work.

Edit: my comment replies to on-topic only. There is no value in off-topic posts remaining. I forgot what this thread was about for a moment.

 

[flying belgian]

A counter view...
We buried my Dad on Thursday.
If I had posted such as a thread, I would not want it brought to the forefront after a few days. Let alone several months or years in the future.

Do7 you have my sympathy

 

[Dave G9N]

That's not a bad approach because then it puts it on the intelligence of the poster but it can be both ways. I don't know if there is something like that for this software, but most probably there is. I had that on the old classic view only you couldn't override it. The reason was that we had a person who was not bad or a troll, but just daily would pick out a very old post and respond to it. On that software, it would break things when he did it. Old threads were impossible to make work even the reply would work.

Edit: my comment replies to on-topic only. There is no value in off-topic posts remaining. I forgot what this thread was about for a moment.

Well, having made an off-topic reply about day late and a dollar short replies, I can only make it worse by posting a screenshot. It might be possible to talk to the site administrators over there if they have the same software.

 

[cpratt]

Well, having made an off-topic reply about day late and a dollar short replies, I can only make it worse by posting a screenshot. It might be possible to talk to the site administrators over there if they have the same software.

No problem, we can check into it. There are 100s of what are called addons for this software that can do just about anything you can imagine.

 

[john in la]

I must be the dumb one here because I am not seeing how me giving a correct answer on a 5 year old post; a search engine; and reviving that post to the first page have anything to do with each other.

Example
Chris ask a question that he never got the correct answer or lest say the full correct answer.
John comes along and with nothing better to do he finds a 5 year old post that he can answer.
The post gets answered with the correct answer but never shows up on the first page.
If Chris has his email in the post he gets a email notifying him a correct answer was given even though he no longer needs the answer because this is 5 years old.
Now Fred comes along using a search engine.
He finds the by now 10 year old post and lordy wouldn't you know it the correct answer that John gave 5 years later is displayed right there in the post.

 

[DoubleO7]

This also has nothing to do with on-topic post revival.

The above is from post #16

I must be the dumb one here because I am not seeing how me giving a correct answer on a 5 year old post; a search engine; and reviving that post to the first page have anything to do with each other.

Example
Chris ask a question that he never got the correct answer or lest say the full correct answer.
John comes along and with nothing better to do he finds a 5 year old post that he can answer.
The post gets answered with the correct answer but never shows up on the first page.
If Chris has his email in the post he gets a email notifying him a correct answer was given even though he no longer needs the answer because this is 5 years old.
Now Fred comes along using a search engine.
He finds the by now 10 year old post and lordy wouldn't you know it the correct answer that John gave 5 years later is displayed right there in the post.

Did you see post number 16 on page one?

 

[Brown David]

A counter view...
We buried my Dad on Thursday.
If I had posted such as a thread, I would not want it brought to the forefront after a few days. Let alone several months or years in the future.

My condolences on your loss.

I missed your post the first time through this thread.