Love Scubaboard but one thing that makes me boil is going into threads with new posts, reading all the way through them only to find out that the thread was started 4 years ago and someone revived it by essentially bumping it with summary advice for someone who no longer browses the forum. While I have no doubt the archive of posts that we have on this forum are invaluable, can we add an auto-lock system for inactive threads dated a year or longer? Adding to some threads is an important process which I understand but there's a good few I read through and can't help but think "why was this revived".
Suggestion Thread Revival Limits
- Thread starter 261311
- Start date
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perhaps there could be a red message at the top indicating a possible stale thread when there are any posts in it that are more than 3 months newer than the previous post (excluding the initial post of course).
I am guessing this is more of a vBulletin issue than a ScubaBoard issue though.
I am guessing this is more of a vBulletin issue than a ScubaBoard issue though.
Peter_C
Contributor
I have been on forums where it put a bold warning that the thread is over XXX days/months/years old. That works great! Of course if people paid attention you can easily see the original post date, and the last post date.
To me it is important to be able to bring an old thread back from the dead sometimes, as information is invaluable and should not die with time, and it should be allowed to be updated with current information or questions.
Yes, warnings such as "This thread has not been posted to in over a year" that I've seen on other forums are helpful. I would not advocate auto-locking old threads. Some topics have a long useful life, such as reviews of a dive op or dive location. In such cases it makes more sense to tack new posts onto a thread that spans a few years than to start a new thread. As for why people revive threads that seem to be past their useful life, I have no idea why they do that or how to prevent it. As far as I know there is no magic filter that can auto-lock such threads while keeping the ones that have long useful lives.
If this thread doesn't get closed, in a year, somebody will inevitably revive it with something like "I agree, way too many old threads get revived".
Sometimes I wonder how people even come across (ridiculously) old threads to revive them, often with a comment that doesn't really add to the discussion. I agree that a "this thread is old" warning might be useful, because from what I've noticed, threads seem to be most often revived by new members or infrequent posters.
Sometimes I wonder how people even come across (ridiculously) old threads to revive them, often with a comment that doesn't really add to the discussion. I agree that a "this thread is old" warning might be useful, because from what I've noticed, threads seem to be most often revived by new members or infrequent posters.
I'm not talking about threads spanning years, I'm talking about inactive threads spanning years. There's a very different difference on the internet between the two. vBulletin is PHP enabled so basically whatever you can dream up can be coded and implemented in that respect. The question is how much work someone would want to put into the system to make sure a thread would warn you or change colour past a certain time frame from the last post over just automatically locking (already software in place for this). A visual warning would be helpful but where do you draw the line between a topic that's passé and dead?
Me being "lazy" not looking at dates has nothing to do with it when there's an overabundance of topics on this forum that have successfully spanned time and has been active for every part of it. It doesn't rate the thread on activity, it rates it on total posts and user rating. It's hard to use dates of creation/ last reply then because they exactly mirror the problem topics at hand here. I'm talking about the bulk of conversations that mention x issue, has a host of replies, dies for 2 years and gets revived with a useless reply like "yeah, right! great information!". Keeping topics open for discussion is important, as is adding to them but keeping them eternally open for any number of weird replies to flood in I think makes them harder to moderate and keep on topic because of the number of thread-jackings. It doesn't save space/ bandwidth because ultimately in one topic or the next there's discussion.
Me being "lazy" not looking at dates has nothing to do with it when there's an overabundance of topics on this forum that have successfully spanned time and has been active for every part of it. It doesn't rate the thread on activity, it rates it on total posts and user rating. It's hard to use dates of creation/ last reply then because they exactly mirror the problem topics at hand here. I'm talking about the bulk of conversations that mention x issue, has a host of replies, dies for 2 years and gets revived with a useless reply like "yeah, right! great information!". Keeping topics open for discussion is important, as is adding to them but keeping them eternally open for any number of weird replies to flood in I think makes them harder to moderate and keep on topic because of the number of thread-jackings. It doesn't save space/ bandwidth because ultimately in one topic or the next there's discussion.
We scold new members for not doing a search, and then when they do one and revive a dead thread, we scold them for that. You can't win for losing . . .
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