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Clean up old Forum Topics?


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What if Groundspeak did the same thing with some of the forums? In the forum database, there are A LOT of topics and maybe people would like to see it cleaned up a bit. If not, don't chew me up, maybe it's not a big deal. ;)

 

Edit: Let me know if I need to start a new topic on this.

Edited by cachman9
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Well you could at least clean out the unnecessary ones.

 

Trouble is how do you decide what's unnecessary? The only ways this could be achieved are to

 

  1. Automatically delete all posts which have been idle for X years
  2. have someone read through all old posts and make a subjective decision about what should be kept

 

1 - would lead to useful posts being deleted as suggested above.

2 - would be a horrendous job and the poor sucker given it would probably quit !

Edited by MartyBartfast
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Could just lock the old threads that are say a year or two without a post. Seems silly to me when a topic has a post added 3 or 4 years later out of the blue. Sometimes you respond to it without realizing the dates and topics in the past posts are now outdated.

A scroll wheel is a handy thing.

Often, starting at that post you want to respond to and scrolling up kinda tells you what you're in for...

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Seems silly to me when a topic has a post added 3 or 4 years later out of the blue.

Look how many times an "out of the blue" post has created two additional pages, as the topic is again relevant.

 

What seems silly (to me) is when one posts on an older thread that had good info, just for S&Gs (but the joke was funny...) and the thread gets locked.

Edited by cerberus1
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Nobody ever seems to want to change anything around here. Sometimes there are things to improve and you just have to go with the flow.

Improve and fixing something that ain't broke aren't the same.

Pretty-sure most would like to see improvements.

Removing an often-used feature because it doesn't suit you... maybe not so much.

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Nobody ever seems to want to change anything around here. Sometimes there are things to improve and you just have to go with the flow.

 

And some people come to a caching forum and want to change everything, despite still learning the game. You have not given a single good reason to delete posts from the forums. They aren't in the way, they don't take any unnecessary space so there is not reason to remove them. And you seem to forget it would be a very labor intensive effort to decide what to delete and what to keep. Most of us would rather see those labor hours going to something productive like fixing CAR or solved puzzles on a map, or...

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The problem is, the search feature is almost ineffective. When you type in a search term, it gives you ALL forums in which that word is contained. That, at least, could be improved. Because it would be better to search topic TITLES rather than what is contained in the posts.

Click the little wheel or cog symbol to the right of the search box. This takes you to an advanced search where you can change the search variables.

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The problem is, the search feature is almost ineffective. When you type in a search term, it gives you ALL forums in which that word is contained. That, at least, could be improved. Because it would be better to search topic TITLES rather than what is contained in the posts.

 

I'd be happy if we could delete our own posts so that I didn't have to edit my occasional duplicate posts and change the text to "duplicate post".

 

There are a couple of issues going on here.

 

FIrst is that there isn't a compelling reason (or at least you haven't presented one) for deleting old forum topics. Since forum topics are paged, old topics get buried in subsequent pages you never see unless you explicitly look at pages with older posts. As others have mentioned, keeping a history of topics, allows users to search previous topics where a question may already have been answered. Also as others have suggested, the fact that some disagree with some of your suggestions has nothing to do with being adverse to change. Groundspeak has a finite amount of development resources, and one would hope that those resources are allocated towards issues that have the biggest impact.

 

As far as the search goes, if you search from the page which shows all forums, it will, by default search all forums. If you're in a specific forum section (e.g. Geocaching Topics), it will search that forum section by default. If you're looking at a specific thread (topic) the default is to search in just that topic. In other words, it works exactly as one might expect it to work.

 

The other issue is that Groundspeak didn't write the forum software. It's licensed software from a third party that has a minimal amount of customization for the look-and-feel and integration with the GS authentication system. The basic functionality of the forum may be something that GS can't change.

 

 

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Unlike many it seems at times, I like to search the database for a question I have.

Often it's found there and I don't have to start (yet) another thread.

I'd like 'em to stay thanks. <_<

I've looked at old threads and some times even posted comments to them. Twice, however, a moderator (Keystone, I think) said the threads were "improvidently bumped." In at least one case the thread was then locked. What are the rules? If you're not allowed to reply to "old" threads, how old? Or does a moderator make a subjective decision about whether your new comments to the old thread are "good enough"? Suppose you read the old thread but want clarification. Then do you need to open a new thread anyway?? :huh:

 

The answer may lie in an old thread - but it feels like twice I was mildly scolded for replying to old threads, so I'm discouraged from even looking at them.

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Seems silly to me when a topic has a post added 3 or 4 years later out of the blue.

Look how many times an "out of the blue" post has created two additional pages, as the topic is again relevant.

 

What seems silly (to me) is when one posts on an older thread that had good info, just for S&Gs (but the joke was funny...) and the thread gets locked.

I totally agree. (See my preceding post.) There should be no reason not to be able to post to "old" threads. To limit that ability discourages reading old threads, & the reason they are maintained is so we can read them. To me that's mind-boggling.

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Nobody ever seems to want to change anything around here. Sometimes there are things to improve and you just have to go with the flow.

 

When you are talking about the kind of change that can't be easily reversed I'd hope that most people would want to err on the side of caution.

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