Jeffrey - Any way to stop this?

[disneysteve]

Is there any way to stop new posters from dredging up really old threads? It seems to happen constantly. Someone new comes along and there are suddenly posts to a dozen threads from a year or 2 or 3 ago. How about locking threads after a certain time period. Maybe 6 months or so.

[kork13]

Is there any way to stop new posters from dredging up really old threads? It seems to happen constantly. Someone new comes along and there are suddenly posts to a dozen threads from a year or 2 or 3 ago. How about locking threads after a certain time period. Maybe 6 months or so.

Or perhaps better, after ~6mo of inactivity... There are alot of pretty old threads here that are regularly used and contributed to... The "Online Savings Account Rates" and "What Frugal thing did you do today?" threads are good examples... They're pretty old, but people still use them fairly often.

I suppose on the other side of the coin, remember that alot of the questions we see here are pretty similar (identical?) to ones people have asked before, so having those old threads still available to be updated, or to post similar but slightly different circumstances would be good to keep the total number of threads down... But then, that may or may not even be an issue ....

[graceful]

Old to some may be new and relevant to others. Just check the date before you start giving advice to the OP who may not even be around anymore. Lol.

[disneysteve]

kork, good point about the thread being inactive, not just old.

[skydivingchic]

I would vote for this as well as I find thread mining rather annoying. On another forum I belong to thread mining is specifically against the guidelines and any time a thread is dug up that has been inactive for more than ~2 weeks, a moderator will lock it. The inactive time could obviously be adjusted to suit the forum.

[jeffrey]

Thank you for the opinions. Will talk to Nate about this and see if we can come up with a solution to make it less annoying to the regular readers

[creditcardfree]

I REALLY like the idea, too. Obviously, past threads still contain valuable information for new readers.

[disneysteve]

I REALLY like the idea, too. Obviously, past threads still contain valuable information for new readers.

I certainly understand that. It just seems that the vast majority of times that a new reader pulls up an ancient thread, it isn't to add any new info but rather just a comment like, "I agree" or "Good point." Old threads should remain available to read but no reason they need to be open to posting.

[Broken Arrow]

It just seems that the vast majority of times that a new reader pulls up an ancient thread, it isn't to add any new info but rather just a comment like, "I agree" or "Good point."

To me, the real problem is when people do that. I wouldn't be opposed to reviving an old thread if someone had something very useful to add.

That isn't to say that a well-intended sentiment isn't appreciated, but... it's netiquette to leave old threads alone.

Implementing this policy on a code level, though, would not be easy. I have yet to see anything done about this issue with any other forums out here. And anyway, it's more of a netiquette issue than an actual disturbance I think, leaving moderators to largely enforce the policy on their own.

Actually, let me take it back. In one forum, all old threads are still there, but their main page only shows, say, the first 50 new threads by default. The rest, you have to wade through the forums to find it. Kind of a transparent way to doing things without hindering it.

[lovcom]

Is this really that big of a problem?

[disneysteve]

Is this really that big of a problem?

Many of us check in by clicking on the "New Posts" link. When that brings up a dozen threads that are sometimes 2-3 years old just because one new poster is trying to boost his thread count, it is pretty annoying. I end up clicking on at least a few of them before I realize that they are all ancient and dredged up for no reason. I find it pretty annoying and it happens pretty regularly.

[segmond]

well then, the issue is that the poster is trying to bring up their post counts. they will only post useless threads which will be more annoying. but i believe newbies are very excited about finding this site and just get into it. thus their going back to very old threads. a newbie trying to just up their post count will not even go far back, they will just post many times on existing threads. i say, lock old threads with less than 5 replies.