Tentative Suggestion: Automatically lock threads if they get no reply for a year.

[Dragon Mommy]

So I have noticed a trend across most of the boards that a thread bumped a year+ out from its last post rarely ends up with on topic discussion. I'd be curious to hear people's thoughts about threads auto-locking after a set amount of time after the last reply (one year? Two years?)

The idea behind this is that if a thread has been dormant for that long, it might perhaps be better to start a new discussion than dredge up an old one.

I would be curious what drawbacks and issues others might see with this, as I can think of a couple myself (sometimes the previous thread has good info or the question has already been answered there) but the majority of old threads I see bumped more than a year out seem to do so only to bring up old conflict or it derails.

 

[Rowan Amore]

46 minutes ago, Bitterthorn said:

So I have noticed a trend across most of the boards that a thread bumped a year+ out from its last post rarely ends up with on topic discussion. I'd be curious to hear people's thoughts about threads auto-locking after a set amount of time after the last reply (one year? Two years?)

The idea behind this is that if a thread has been dormant for that long, it might perhaps be better to start a new discussion than dredge up an old one.

I would be curious what drawbacks and issues others might see with this, as I can think of a couple myself (sometimes the previous thread has good info or the question has already been answered there) but the majority of old threads I see bumped more than a year out seem to do so only to bring up old conflict or it derails.

 

I agree they should be locked after a time.  I've seen people reopen old threads for information and everything suggested in that thread was no longer an issue but they say, "it's what came up in Google search as the best answer".  Instead of them replying and wondering why none of the information is helping, they would need to start a new thread with their current issue and get pertinent information.

It's happened to me when looking.  All I find are 6-10 year old threads.  If the answer is there, great.  If not, I'll start a new thread.  Maybe LL just doesn't see the point in going back and taking the time (manpower) to lock thousands of threads.  Going forward, auto-lock would be great.

[Solar Legion]

Yeah ... no.

Thread older than you're comfortable with being "revived" posted to? Move on. Can't be arsed to actually look at the date? Your problem.

Then again, I go through the categories that I like to read, one at a time and don't use any of the activity feeds. For exactly this reason.

[Eddy Vortex]

And deprive us the pleasure of making fun of the necroposter?

We already have warnings and big blue banners for that.  If they choose to ignore that, that's on them. Not our problem.

Occasionally there may be a legit reason for resurrecting an old thread if someone has new information to add to an old topic.  I think it would make sense to add the post instead of creating a new disjointed thread and have the same subject matter scattered in bits and pieces all over the place.

 

[Talligurl]

Of all the things they could change to make things better, this is way down on the list,

[bigmoe Whitfield]

On 3/11/2021 at 4:57 AM, Talligurl said:

Of all the things they could change to make things better, this is way down on the list,

and should not be down on the list,  it should be one of the first things every forum has implemented out of the box,  when forums were real big,  this bumping of topics 10+ years old and asking "did you sell it"  (I run a car forum)  because HIGHLY annoying,  we wrote our own plugin,  it locked the topic, the person did it again, they got a nice week away from the forum,  plus it stopped the drive by spammers/sellers/onetime posters.     so I'm jaded I know, lol.

[Talligurl]

3 hours ago, bigmoe Whitfield said:

I run a car forum

This isn't a car forum. 

[bigmoe Whitfield]

6 hours ago, Talligurl said:

This isn't a car forum. 

This is still a forum,  Pushing a dead topic from even 2 years ago on here is not wise, the information in it is almost always out dated or with the wrong information, we should help users to not do it,  make them aware it's better to POST a new topic, instead of digging up the dead.

[Talligurl]

1 hour ago, bigmoe Whitfield said:

the information in it is almost always out dated 

This may be true about technical topics, but not every topic here falls into that category.

 

[Kathlen Onyx]

Don't people have better things to worry about than this? So a topic get brought up again...big deal. 

[AdminGirl]

Of all the shaming of necroposters, I rarely (if ever) see them referring to the information being outdated. I mean, I get that it can be the case, but I think the hate for necroposters is far greater than the actual reasoning. More of a cultural thing IMO. I personally prefer information being in one place. When I search something, I'd rather open up one thread and just read the latest comments instead of having several threads about the same thing.

[Rowan Amore]

5 minutes ago, AdminGirl said:

Of all the shaming of necroposters, I rarely (if ever) see them referring to the information being outdated. I mean, I get that it can be the case, but I think the hate for necroposters is far greater than the actual reasoning. More of a cultural thing IMO. I personally prefer information being in one place. When I search something, I'd rather open up one thread and just read the latest comments instead of having several threads about the same thing.

Just answered one today.  Originally from 2013.

They never did ask a question to whatever their issue is

 

 

[Alwin Alcott]

1 hour ago, AdminGirl said:

 I'd rather open up one thread and just read the latest comments instead of having several threads about the same thing.

problem with help questions and technical.. it rarely are the same things as the question from the orignal poster...
Or, for example, a 2009 question now in 2021 gets a reply  "i have the same!!!" ....ehm..yeah....

[LittleMe Jewell]

Question/Answer section should definitely be locked after a certain amount of time.  Almost all necroposting in those thread are things where the person really should be opening their own thread.

Discussion threads are hit or miss.  There can be valid reasons for commenting on an old thread.

[Silent Mistwalker]

On some forums, it's not ok to resurrect necro a dead or old thread. On other forums, starting a new thread about a topic that already has a thread is not ok. On the SL forums, it's ok to necro. That is the reason they enabled that little feature to warn people they are about to necro and didn't enable the feature to auto-lock threads. Or am I the only one that remembers LL doing that not long ago? 🤔

[Bree Giffen]

I think old threads should be locked and if a poster wants to refer back to it they can make a link to it. Shaming doesn't work because necro posts are made by new users and new users come in all the time. Giving users a choice on whether to necro post or not also doesn't work because new users simply don't know it's a bad choice to necro post. The warning that the post is old doesn't really mean much to a new user either. How do you control a situation where you are getting a stream of new people who will never know enough to not post on an old thread? You lock old threads.

[Silent Mistwalker]

If LL will pay me no less than $15 USD per hour wage (normal 8-5 M-F office hours) I'll be happy to spend the next 5 or 6 years going through all the threads and locking the old ones. I'll be eligible for retirement about the time I run out of threads to lock.

[colleen Criss]

I don't understand the logic of this tbh. What is the issue with it? if you feel it is too old or not relevant, don't respond. New users have no idea really BUT they decided they need to know more like MANY newbies would coming to a LL run forum. Why lock them and what is to stop anyone from asking the question or bringing up the topic again. Unless you want all of those topics deleted and you still don't know what will be revisited, reworded, reasked. 

Information, communication is important. Oldbies should be aware of this. 

 

[Rowan Amore]

4 hours ago, colleen Criss said:

I don't understand the logic of this tbh. What is the issue with it? if you feel it is too old or not relevant, don't respond. New users have no idea really BUT they decided they need to know more like MANY newbies would coming to a LL run forum. Why lock them and what is to stop anyone from asking the question or bringing up the topic again. Unless you want all of those topics deleted and you still don't know what will be revisited, reworded, reasked. 

Information, communication is important. Oldbies should be aware of this. 

 

Especially in the answers section, it can be very confusing.  Answers are sorted unlike other threads.  Unless you sort by date, the answers following the question can seem odd and well, out of order.  New people definitely might miss this and have no clue what the heck is going on.  Heck, some older users don't know to sort by date.  The default sort is by Votes not date.  Old irrelevant answers don't help anyone.  They can certainly LOOK at the answers but need to ask their own question.

Edited April 21, 2021 by Rowan Amore

[bigmoe Whitfield]

On 4/20/2021 at 2:14 PM, colleen Criss said:

I don't understand the logic of this tbh. What is the issue with it? if you feel it is too old or not relevant, don't respond. New users have no idea really BUT they decided they need to know more like MANY newbies would coming to a LL run forum. Why lock them and what is to stop anyone from asking the question or bringing up the topic again. Unless you want all of those topics deleted and you still don't know what will be revisited, reworded, reasked. 

Information, communication is important. Oldbies should be aware of this. 

 

Some of us are very old forum users,  basically since the beginning of time, most of us have also ran a forum or helped moderate one,  OLD information should be locked,  but still visible,  nothing new needs added after a year,  there is not point in bringing up dead topics,  it's why currently on the car forum I've been administrating since 2002, we have stickies and help guides and detailed explanations on what needs to happen and how you need to do it, we also auto lock anything older than a year old. 

[Solar Legion]

Oh for ...

That is great, that is also how you run your forum. It is not and has not ever been how this one is run and frankly every forum should not be run the exact same way.

Is it irksome when an older topic with no relation at all to current events is bumped up? A bit. Hover over the topic, hit Mark as Read and move on.

Unless it is being done as part of a Spam spree or something, there's no reason to complain about it.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

8 hours ago, Solar Legion said:

Oh for ...

That is great, that is also how  you  run  your  forum. It is not and has not ever been how  this  one is run and frankly every forum  should not  be run the exact same way.

Is it irksome when an older topic with no relation  at all  to current events is bumped up? A bit. Hover over the topic, hit Mark as Read  and move on.

Unless it is being done as part of a Spam spree or something, there's no reason to complain about it.

I dont want to see something with a date that was 20 years ago, with a person that can't seem to read even the warning, bumping it asking "did you fix the car"  

[Solar Legion]

2 hours ago, bigmoe Whitfield said:

I dont want to see something with a date that was 20 years ago, with a person that can't seem to read even the warning, bumping it asking "did you fix the car"  

That's nice.

You're free to manage your own forum in that manner. It is quite apparent that it is different here. Adapt.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

2 hours ago, Solar Legion said:

That's nice.

You're free to manage your own forum in that manner. It is  quite  apparent that it is different here. Adapt.

Na, we are done here.  Got to think how long I've run a forum, how much effort and time I've put into it,   I see a forum as a living breathing area to get information at, but old information never has a need to be brought up in any manner,  a new topic, of the person asking about even a specific topic would be fine.     but I regress forums are dying,  brainwashing by facebook has taken place, these forums for us old timers are the way we communicate the best, sorry if I ruffled any feathers. 

[Solar Legion]

4 hours ago, bigmoe Whitfield said:

Na, we are done here.  Got to think how long I've run a forum, how much effort and time I've put into it,   I see a forum as a living breathing area to get information at, but old information never has a need to be brought up in any manner,  a new topic, of the person asking about even a specific topic would be fine.     but I regress forums are dying,  brainwashing by facebook has taken place, these forums for us old timers are the way we communicate the best, sorry if I ruffled any feathers. 

We can agree on being done and on the nature of a forum in terms of it being "a living, breathing creature".

Beyond that, you're responding to someone who has been using fora since before Facebook, ran one himself for a short time and actually understands that not all of them are run the exact same way.

I'll leave it at this: For the sort of forum you ran? Your method of operation was proper. For something like this or similar? Not so much. Old issues can resurface, rhyming (similar) ones can crop up that might have some mitigating information in an older thread or might warrant a poke.

Meh. Moving on.

ETA: Related/tangential - What rather irritates me here in particular is the apparent inability of many users to use the Search function before posting.

Edited April 24, 2021 by Solar Legion