Lifetime of a thread

I almost hesitate to post this- becuase, if my suggestion was followed, I might end up being a junior lounger (or less).

But, there's some boards which do not seem to have a useful long term life.

Definitely, threads in meeting point, I feel are no longer relevant some time after the event. Perhaps leave a week after the event has finished- put them into cyberspace purgatory.

Perhaps Coffe Longe posts should last longer.

Should there be a mechanism to retire posts in *SOME* lounges past a certain amount of time?

My posts about a Cashflow game in Queanbeyan will be of absolutely no use to people who join the forum in six months' time.

Posts in coffee lounge about great limericks or movies will not be of lasting value either.

Should there be a limited lifetime in these forums (fora?)

And how should that affect the status of members who may have contributed a lot to these forums?

(Steve Navra, for instance, is one of the most solid people contributing to the forum. But his post counts are low overall- and most postst ahve been to "Meeting Point")

(On the other hand, I should not have permanent brownie points for posts about a Cashflow game which ended months ago)
 
Originally posted by geoffw
Should there be a mechanism to retire posts in *SOME* lounges past a certain amount of time?

There is no inbuild archiving mechanism in vBulletin - they decided not to bother since performance is usually the reason for archiving, but vBulletin isn't really affected by huge numbers (millions) of posts in the database.

As for posts that are obsolete. I guess it might be nice to clear them out occasionally, but it's really no big deal is it ? Isn't it nice to browse through meeting point and remember the events that we had back in the past ?

I can always mass-prune posts over a certain age from a forum if need be - but at this stage I don't see a compelling reason to do so.

Originally posted by geoffw
Posts in coffee lounge about great limericks or movies will not be of lasting value either.

I totally disagree... these things are pure gems, which will stay around to bring joy and fond memories into the future. I have started working on getting the data from the old WebBoard forum into a format ready to import into the new forum. Going back over some of the early posts is truely fascinating. Even the silly threads are still a good read.

Originally posted by geoffw
Should there be a limited lifetime in these forums (fora?)

And how should that affect the status of members who may have contributed a lot to these forums?

We've tried to make it clear that the post count does not mean terribly much - there should be no "status" to be had from having lots of posts. There is simply a recognition that you have indeed contributed to the forum community by posting. Actually, think of the post count more of a measure of activity than of a measure of contribution.

We are still working out details of how we can award status to those people who we as a community feel have made valuable contributions to the forum - but it won't be purely based on a post count, so don't get too caught up in numbers.

Don't forget that the old forum had a huge number of posts from many many people, but now that we've moved to the new forum, everyone starts back at zero. When I import the posts from the old forum, they will not be counting towards anyone's post counts.
 
No worries Sim. it's fine tuning time.

(Sounds like the start of a limerick to me)

Archiving is not so much a function of performance- it may well be a function of what people get when they search.

If someone does a search in six months for "Cashflow", they will get heaps of posts about games which ended long ago.

But they might not find the posts about , for instance, Cashflow vs negative gearing.

That would not help anybody.
 
The need to purge threads should not be considered purely in the interests of improving the searching. If anything, the search facility should include a mechanism to exclude posts older than a particular age.

As for the post counts, it occurred to me that it would be good to separately count the number of threads started versus threads answered. This might give a more reliable indication of participation.

Those starting a lot of threads might be considered people seeking information, and those answering a lot of threads might be considered those contributing a lot of information.

Still not perfect, but perhaps a slightly more useful measure.
 
If the idea were adopted to delete obsolete posts, how are people going to get on their soapbox and abuse other posters to search the archives. ;)

I agree that outdated stuff (eg Cashflow meetings etc) should be deleted but that should be left up to the originator to do.
 
Grant,

The originator can't delete a thread (directly).

But a poster may ask a mod (nicely of course) to delete a post and/or thread.

Geoff
 
Originally posted by geoffw
Grant,

The originator can't delete a thread (directly).

But a poster may ask a mod (nicely of course) to delete a post and/or thread.

Geoff

I was a little confused with this one Geoff. I was under the impression that the originator could delete a topic that they started. It was certainly true in the beginning. However, a quick search for a similar topic explains why you comments are now true.

Response from SIM on the topic "Can I Delete my own Posts ?"

Good point geoffw.

I have disabled the "users can delete their own threads by deleting the first post" option.

If you want to delete the thread, please use the notification options and have the moderator delete it for you.

Let me know if this causes any problems for people
 
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