I don't know much about forums but it seems to me that a lot of old threads get revived when they shouldn't. This happens when inexperienced posters use the search function, find a thread they like and don't look at the date of the posts. Honest mistake.

Maybe adding a bright-red warning in all-caps that says "This thread is older than 2 months, don't revive it unless you have something useful to add, no pointless comments pls" or whatever would help. Maybe even as a "are you sure?"-type window that shows up when they click the post button.

It's not going to stop idiots that acctually think "lol" is a useful comment to add to a year-old thread, but it will save some threads at least.

CrownRoyal

Vatican City State1872 Posts

November 26 2005 17:32 GMT

Not a bad idea, but I'm not sure it would be worth the amount of time it would take to code it in.

Ekii

Poland346 Posts

November 26 2005 21:45 GMT

Quiet nice idea but to be honest I think it's not that necessary...

Liquid`Drone

Norway28706 Posts

November 26 2005 23:29 GMT

well, someone who revives a 2 year old thread with "lol" is likely to get banned for doing so and probably isn't gonna be a good poster if he does that anyway, so it's kind of like a good way to weed out unwanted visitors through baiting them into showing their real colours
or something

mitsy

United States1792 Posts

November 26 2005 23:41 GMT

at the least the admins could be alerted of it easier. tl bot could have an "admin alert" topic stickied and post stuff to it like WARNING -- ASShoLE DETECTED OIN SECTOR 9

Meat

Netherlands3751 Posts

December 02 2005 10:39 GMT

Nice idea, it's really easy to program.

Doctorasul

Romania1145 Posts

December 03 2005 08:00 GMT

Does this mean you'll do it?

mitsy

United States1792 Posts

December 03 2005 11:28 GMT

perhaps the asshole detection system (aforementioned) can do a few other things eventually, like detect certain posting patterns or topic naming patterns, for instance.

expostfacto

United States365 Posts

December 03 2005 12:24 GMT

why not just close threads a month after no posts are made?

people can still link the old thread from a new one if it's necessary to do so, and this keeps the new discussion nicely separate from the really old stuff.

I do this on my own forums and it seems to work well.

GTR

51497 Posts

December 03 2005 12:32 GMT

#10

a year would be better than a month IMO

mitsy

United States1792 Posts

December 03 2005 21:42 GMT

#11

i would like to be able to quote from closed threads more easily though. i like the quote function but it doesnt let me do it on closed threads

Syst[eM]

335 Posts

January 09 2006 04:21 GMT

#12

You can always type ["quote"] before and ["/quote"] after*, although you'd have to type the person's name in manually.

Ignore the quotation marks, they are there so it didn't look like

before and

edit:

I realize this post is old, that was the irony.

mitsy

United States1792 Posts

January 10 2006 17:41 GMT

#13

true on all counts.
but lacking style.

being able to use the site's Quoting ability does more than include a nice bolded exact name, timestamp, etc. it allows you to retain the formatting (the bb code) within the thread you're quoting, which sometimes is really important

[X]Ken_D

United States4650 Posts

January 11 2006 02:40 GMT

#14

Why not just closed thread that are older than 2 months

mitsy

United States1792 Posts

January 11 2006 02:43 GMT

#15

it does seem odd that topics are kept open indefinitely when clearly no one wants them to be reopened. i think ideally every topic would close and then be categorized in where it belongs, for reference purposes. threads that discuss this sort of thing will be in the category with the name of the sort, and so on. the only harm closing dead topics does is that it "unsorts them," so if we correct this, then we have an orgasm.

[X]Ken_D

United States4650 Posts

January 11 2006 03:58 GMT

#16

On January 09 2006 13:21 Syst[eM] wrote:
I realize this post is old, that was the irony.

same. LOL

EAGER-beaver

Canada2799 Posts

January 15 2006 05:34 GMT

#17

On November 27 2005 08:29 Liquid`Drone wrote:
well, someone who revives a 2 year old thread with "lol" is likely to get banned for doing so and probably isn't gonna be a good poster if he does that anyway, so it's kind of like a good way to weed out unwanted visitors through baiting them into showing their real colours
or something

Translation:

Drone likes to ban people