Proposal: Regarding Duplicate Threads and Necroposts.

This proposal consists of the distinction between necros (useless posts that serve no purpose than to revive threads) and actual contributive posts to old topics that people simply lost interest in. In addition, if there are two or more topics concerning similar or identical subjects with active participants, they are to be merged as most appropriate into a single thread.

Duplicate posts of topics hosting active discussion would be punished with up to two points, that may be disputed in the appropriate subforum if the user feels they were given in poor judgement.

Permission to speak, sir, please.

You have the forum permissions to post here.

I don't see why you'd ask me in such a sarcastic manner unless you wish to affront.

Tiel wrote:

You have the forum permissions to post here.

I don't see why you'd ask me in such a sarcastic manner unless you wish to affront.

Eeyyyuup.

In a standard forum, a topic over say 3 months old should just be left alone and a new one started so as not to confuse people. Necroposting is great for things within 3 months, but after that, the discussion may have shifted so the title no longer applies. That said, I also propose we make a number of superthreads, like this.

"Minecraft Superthread." "SoaSE Superthread". "ME superthread". "Roblox Superthread".

So basically; yes for under three months, if there is a superthread for it, post it there, and then if not you may as well make a new one, because the old one's already gone. The HALO ones are breaking both of our rules.

The reason that discussions drift so far from the OP on the Futurecraft Forums is that this type of behavior was considered OK and even promoted by some of the moderation staff on occasion. With the new reforms, I doubt this will be an issue as long as topics are kept in check.

So basically we have a perfectly good thread with some solid discussion that people simply lost interest in, and then some guy comes along, unwilling to scroll a bit down the Offtopic subforum page, and creates a new one that could have merely been a new post in the old topic.

The policy here should not be "Keep making threads until the entire subforum becomes a veritable wastebin" and more of a "Revive threads if you feel you have something useful to add to". Even if it's older than the forum itself, as long as the post is positively contributive, it should not be treated as a necro. I imagine the old scheme of things makes many users hesitant to click on threads that have not been participated in for a while, opting to create their own topic for a subject rather than risk aiding a troooll. This is bad, and something needs to be done to break that habit.

This proposal is that something.

Made this a global announcement for higher visibility. If a mod or admin doesn't think that's kosher, do move it back.

I extended to vote time slightly to accomodate for people who just heard about this. Anyway,

How would we, as moderators, be able to tell if a thread is a duplicate? You said,

Quote :

And no, it does not call for every moderator to index every thread that's ever existed as you're implying here. It's more geared towards the allowing of contributive posts in 'dead' threads (I have already distinguished the difference between that and a necro) where the alternative would have been a new thread, easing the burden on the mods by not filling up the forum with topics until it becomes all but unmanageable.

I completely fail to see how this eases burden on us. You're suggesting we punish people for making duplicate topics. But lets say a topic comes up about legos, and a 3 month old one is in the works. But it is buried in the off-topic section. As moderators, we would have to actively search for EVERY topic that comes up in order to determine if it is spam. There's simply no other way to enforce this.

In addition, our current rules already allow for the posting in dead threads if you have something completely legitimate and contributing to say.

As far as I know Fenway, the current rules do not.

In addition, I had given the poll 2 days from this morning. I fail to see how we'd have any more voters in that span of time given that the amount has stayed at 15 for quite some time now, but I allocated it anyway.

But you and Iv have a point as far as the killing of duplicate threads is concerned. I think this could be enforced selectively, for instance if there were two topics on the same page that concern the same topic, one would be merged into the other, as per the Halo 4 and Planetside 2 threads. This proposal would concern 1) The legitimization of contributive posts to old topics, and 2) The obligation for moderators to merge any duplicate threads into the most appropriate topic given all are hosting active discussion.

I have modified the proposal and made a new poll.

Now you're talking.

This still obligates people to search before they make new threads and clog up space, but we as moderators don't have to search every time a new topic comes up. We mearly have to go through the first few pages in the section.

You now have my support.