Thread expiry date?

[Barnum4000]

I was wondering why Gigarank doesn't delete or lock old threads that people haven't posted in a while.

I was thinking that Gigarank could implement a feature that would lock or delete threads that have not had any new posts in for a long time and are now just taking up space. This is just an idea that I thought may be useful for keeping the forum organised and to save memory on the server.

 

[Genesis]

@"Barnum4000"

Not a bad idea in general, but sometimes one gets a topic that has a very long life, in that it keeps being current and an automatic closure won't be a good idea. I.e. we can get a quality poster who has something worthwhile to add to the topic.

If we do notice that someone is posting to an obsolete topic, we do close it.

Also, some members don't like topics that are closed for no good reason. Sort of takes the appearance of too strict.

 

[fouadChk]

@"Barnum4000"

Not a bad idea in general, but sometimes one gets a topic that has a very long life, in that it keeps being current and an automatic closure won't be a good idea. I.e. we can get a quality poster who has something worthwhile to add to the topic.

If we do notice that someone is posting to an obsolete topic, we do close it.

Also, some members don't like topics that are closed for no good reason. Sort of takes the appearance of too strict.

I can't agree more!... Closing threads is never a good idea unless there is some very good reason to it. People join the forum at different points in time and may add their own perspective to the discussion. Garbage posts, on the other hand, can always be deleted...

 

[GigaGreg]

Yeah, but digging 2 years old threads its not good at all. That is a point tho.

 

[Genesis]

Yeah, but digging 2 years old threads its not good at all. That is a point tho.

Agreed, depending on the content of the post. I still don't think it is necessary to lock the thread of two years ago, it's enough to just delete the post as spam, as that way the thread will jump back to where it came from in history time wise and leave the forum neat and tidy. Otherwise we have a thread from two years ago listed in current time with a lock on looking out of place in the forum. Members don't like it either, as it represents control that has been taken away from them. Which is unfair of course, as the spammer by that time has been either banned or left the forum. And it's the regular members who indirectly get "banned" from the thread.

There are of course "expired" threads that should be locked. I always try and do it as subtly as I can so the thread will always stay in time sequence of the date of the last quality post that was made in it.

 

[GigaGreg]

There are of course "expired" threads that should be locked. I always try and do it as subtly as I can so the thread will always stay in time sequence of the date of the last quality post that was made in it.

Once again, I agree. I try to do that all the time when ever I find thread like that.

 

[Genesis]

There are of course "expired" threads that should be locked. I always try and do it as subtly as I can so the thread will always stay in time sequence of the date of the last quality post that was made in it.

Once again, I agree. I try to do that all the time when ever I find thread like that.

Great stuff! :drinks:

 

[Barnum4000]

I'm sure some people wouldn't mind if one of their threads are closed or deleted. Maybe a good way to counter this is to let people archive their threads which prevents it from being deleted or it is saved on their machine in some sort of way.

 

[Genesis]

I'm sure some people wouldn't mind if one of their threads are closed or deleted. Maybe a good way to counter this is to let people archive their threads which prevents it from being deleted or it is saved on their machine in some sort of way.

Maybe if members had their own blogs in the Forum, that would be a good idea, but this is a shared Forum. Probably more practical for staff to do the archiving. Agreed though there is always room for improvement, I personally don't like things to be automated. I like the human touch. Automation would probably be good for a very large forum such as webhostingtalk.com. But then I don't like large forums like that.

 

[Peter]

I don't understand why a forum would want to delete threads, except if it's spam or useless one-post threads that never got any replies. If old threads was automatically removed I would probably not feel motivated to post.

I'm not a huge fan of locking threads. A few times, on other forums, I have come back and added additional updates to threads that I started many years ago. I guess it could be okay if the thread is locked for everyone except the person who created the thread, but I think it's better to place a big red notice to discourage replies, like gamedev.net does it.

Old topic!
Peter, the last post of this topic is over 60 days old and at this point you may not reply in this topic. If you wish to continue this conversation start a new topic.

Despite what it says it's actually possible to reply, but it prevents most people from bumping the thread without a very good reason.