Jasoco wrote:Forum software really should apply a sort of shading to posts that are older than a certain threshold. Or remove the ability to quote. Or at the very least warn you when you're about to reply to or bump a topic that is years old.
2008 is before I was even here! (I came in 2009)
That depends on your point of view. Because someone necroed an old thread we get the history and a better context for a choice. If each thread were "one and done" you'd lose a lot of richness. There are some boards who keep everything of the same topic in the same thread over years (5+ years for one French speaking koi board I visit). The discourse moderators for Stonehearth do a great job of condensing all the new posts that ask the same things over and over into one thread. Post a thread on the same topic there, and find your thread moved to a thread already created on that topic.
That said I can see both models working, long-term threads and the question-of-the-day style where necro is frowned on.
I wonder what a good policy might be in this case: i just found this question Running start-up options? to which i believe to have an answer. (use the variable 'arg' which contains the command line arguments).
question age vs possible usefullness for people who search for it?
For me I vote for the usefulness aspect of that. I might run across that very thread searching for that very problem and if the answer never gets added to that thread, I'll have to keep searching. Add the answer!
I think a warning is the right level to do something like this. It prevents users from thinking that what they're replying to is actually up-to-date (which is the real problem) but doesn't prevent users from bringing up old topics for discussion (which isn't really a problem).
Forum software really should apply a sort of shading to posts that are older than a certain threshold.
This probably works really well if done by gradient color across all posts in a thread, possibly with a sort of inverse log in terms of time.
Then you'll be able to quickly spot an entirely new post (with an almost white background) or a topic that hasn't been responded to in a long time (with a dark-grey background), as well as get an idea of how fast a conversation is flowing (with a group of posts with the same color being made in rapid succession, while a gap with a notable color change representing a break)
Either way, it'd be a set of options the forum owner could set up. The best course for a forum like this is the warning course where it just reminds the poster that it is an old post and "do you really want to bump this?" If they're answering something that was never answered, then fine. Good for you. But if its a general thread and they just bump it thinking it was new, then there's the problem. So the warning would remind them "Oh, wait, I didn't know this thread was from 2008. My bad!"
Of course the point is moot since I don't know of any forum software that offers those options.
jjmafiae wrote:maybe make a poll about these options in this thread ?
Would it matter? Its not like the feature even exists anyway. It would just be us voting about how we wish forum software worked. Someone would still have to write a plugin for the forum to do it.
