Prevent / Discourage raising long dead threads

Hello Edugeekers,

I want to suggest that we add a rule or discourage people from posting/raising long dead threads, i.e. ones that havent had any updates in over a 12 month, its quite frustrating when that happens I find, don't know how anyone else feels about it., but I just wanted to raise it as a suggestion after seeing yet another thread raised to the top here with nothing massively relevant - http://www.edugeek.net/forums/behind...vil-prank.html

Possibly auto lock posts after 12 months inactivity is a solution I think (been a couple of years since I looked behind a VBulletin board)

Yeah I kinda agree with this, every kind of these threads should be locked with the following:
Attachment 15064

Depends why you're replying. What's actual problem you wish to solve?

If its a tech issue i say no. If for example there is an issue with word, why open another thread for the exact same issue? All the previous posts will be valuable.

I can understand it if its a long serving technical issue the thread staying open or even being reopened if it autolocked say after 2 years with what I suggested.

I raised this because I noticed it a lot on here lately though, that people "necro" very, very old threads like the one I linked, usually with their first post on here, its not usual "netiquette" to raise dead posts in forums and I find it a little frustrating thinking something is somewhat a "hot topic" to find that someone has just replied (sometimes with nonsensical/trivial stuff) onto an old thread.

I think it could be a possible problem with the "similar threads feature" also as I am typing this in the edit box, I see 3 posts linking in from 2010 and 1 from 2011.

When it happens to technical threads, there's a 50% chance it's a clueless sales type (or link spammer) promoting their product/service.

How about the person who finds the old (and locked) thread links to it in their initial post in the new thread? i.e:

"Hey, I'm having a similar problem as described in <Link to locked thread>, but mine's purple."

Say the autolock script slings in a "This thread is locked due to old age, if you're experiencing a similar issue, click here to create a new thread that links to the old one as a reference point".

*pokes @ZeroHour*

Quote:

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Originally Posted by pete

When it happens to technical threads, there's a 50% chance it's a clueless sales type (or link spammer) promoting their product/service.

How about the person who finds the old (and locked) thread links to it in their initial post in the new thread? i.e:

"Hey, I'm having a similar problem as described in <Link to locked thread>, but mine's purple."

Say the autolock script slings in a "This thread is locked due to old age, if you're experiencing a similar issue, click here to create a new thread that links to the old one as a reference point".

*pokes @ZeroHour*

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That's a good idea - that way the tech stuff that could be still relevant is not lost.

Fair enough if it's like the linked thread you mention, but I also like @pete idea for the technical threads where it maybe necessary to 'revive the dead'.

No. The solution doesn't match the problem. Spammers will just choose an 11 month old thread. And then what will you do?

Not going to argue with @pcstru fair point. But as a solution to ordinary users reviving old threads for whatever reason surely it has some merit.

:-) Your suggestion does have merit - it correctly identifies a problem. But the mods are pretty pro-active and tend to deal with genuine spam pretty quickly. Ordinary users might want to post an update to threads older than a year. That might well have merit too.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by pete

How about the person who finds the old (and locked) thread links to it in their initial post in the new thread?

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That's what I was going to suggest too since this is what other forums do and it works really well e.g. Ars Technica's.

A lot can change in IT in 1-2 years. Some issues that may exist in Windows 7 SP1 might be fixed in Windows 7 SP2 for example.

It's a good idea. As you have all pointed out though, technical threads should be exempt from this kind of a rule. General type threads should have a cap on them. Perhaps ZeroHour could work out a script to automatically lock inactive threads after 6 months on inactivity or more (that way it could be run as a twice yearly job) and we could get Sysman to knock up a suitable logo to mark the thread closure. That way it will be obvious to anyone trying to post that it is in fact no longer active.

There's already a vBulletin plugin to cover autoclosing threads after a defined period of time: Threads Auto Close - vBulletin.org Forum
Shouldn't be too big a deal for ZH to butcher it to only apply to specific forums...

Of course ... a really annoying person could go and find threads that are x-1 days old (x is time allowed before locking) and bump them ... just to be annoying.

Had a few trolls do that on some other boards ... it got to be quite funny and there was an unofficial book by the Mods as to which threads would get the bump.