"Old Thread Warning"

Cosmopolitan

Cosmopolitan

O.G.
May 23, 2006
14,767
27,036
#1
Today I noticed that another forum I belong to includes the following warning box, which has to be checked, when a user wants to reply to a very old thread. Wondering if this might be useful here too? Just a suggestion.

On the one hand, bumping three-four-five year-old "dead" threads can be unwelcome. But of course you also don't want newbies starting lots of new duplicate threads for issues that have been discussed in the past. So its always a balancing act. Still, perhaps something to consider as tPF ages and the forum has lots of five-year-old threads kicking around...

Old Thread Warning
This Thread is more than 897 days old. It is very likely that it does not need any further discussion and thus bumping it serves no purpose.
If you still feel it is necessary to make a new reply, you can still do so though.
[CHECK BOX] I am aware that this Thread is rather old but I still want to make a reply.
Click to expand...
 
#4
cool! Yeah, sometimes it's fine. Other times, like when people are asking if they should get "this one" or "this one" it's pretty ridiculous, lol!
 
#5
Swanky Mama Of Three said:
cool! Yeah, sometimes it's fine. Other times, like when people are asking if they should get "this one" or "this one" it's pretty ridiculous, lol!
Click to expand...

It could work best, I think, if the software "clock" could be set going by the date of the last post, rather than by the date the thread was created... For example, you'd get the warning if you called up a 2006 thread that hasn't been posted in for two years. You wouldn't get the warning if you called up a 2006 thread that was just posted in last month or last week.
 
#6
Love this idea, Cosmo!! :tup: Good to see you again!! :hbeat:

Old Thread Warning
This Thread is more than 897 days old. It is very likely that it does not need any further discussion and thus bumping it serves no purpose.
If you still feel it is necessary to make a new reply, you can still do so though.
[CHECK BOX] I am aware that this Thread is rather old but I still want to make a reply.
Click to expand...
 
#8
Why not just archive old threads? Pick a cutoff date and have them archived. They'd be searchable but not possible to respond to. The worst that can happen is a repeat of a previously discussed topic, but it's no worse than the continuation of a thread after it's archived for reaching 5K posts.
 
#11
Cosmopolitan said:
It could work best, I think, if the software "clock" could be set going by the date of the last post, rather than by the date the thread was created... For example, you'd get the warning if you called up a 2006 thread that hasn't been posted in for two years. You wouldn't get the warning if you called up a 2006 thread that was just posted in last month or last week.
Click to expand...


Great idea and the implementation would definitely have to take into consideration the age of the last post in the thread. We still have some threads (reference threads) that are several years old, yet have ongoing discussions.

jellyv said:
Why not just archive old threads? Pick a cutoff date and have them archived. They'd be searchable but not possible to respond to. The worst that can happen is a repeat of a previously discussed topic, but it's no worse than the continuation of a thread after it's archived for reaching 5K posts.
Click to expand...


I see a lot of boards that do that and quite frankly I am not sure about whether it's a good idea or not.
 
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