R Soul on 11/5/2011 at 15:59
We all know that it's better to continue an existing thread than to start a new one, but currently there seems to be a bizarre trend. People resurrect threats that go back nearly 10 years just to avoid starting a new thread. My question to the mods is this: Have you been having words with people? I've never noticed other members telling people off for starting new threads because someone else made the same point on March 18th 2004.
My beef with resurrection is that it creates the impression that long-gone members have returned, and it gets people reading old discussions only for them to find that there's no point replying.
Digital Nightfall on 11/5/2011 at 16:27
Where have you noticed this mostly happening? The Thief forums, right?
BrokenArts on 11/5/2011 at 17:05
Then the noobs need to catch on and look at the starting date of the thread in question, most old timers do that now these days. Its happened enough in the fan mission forum for starters.
jtr7 on 12/5/2011 at 02:50
The trend includes old-timers. :erg:
Beleg Cúthalion on 13/5/2011 at 08:18
I consider a forum some sort of library to fill in. And instead of having dozens of threads dealing with an issue and offering different solutions in every single one, I'd prefer a single thread containing everything. Of course that requires the moderators being busy and glueing threads together like we did upon the re-start of the Eidos Germany forums in 2005...but that apparently never happened here. Oh, and of course my habit might be a reaction to the sometimes ridiculously pointless threads which are started about e.g. "Last time a guy stole my banana and it reminded me of Thief so HERE I AM BACK" or "I was trapped in a villa in Pakistan for five years, what have I missed?" or even worse.
Quote Posted by R Soul
My beef with resurrection is that it creates the impression that long-gone members have returned, and it gets people reading old discussions only for them to find that there's no point replying.
I think this is a rather cheap argument when you really consider a forum as a center of information (c.f. the above). You won't get any serious shock when you think old people have returned and then they haven't; and neither will you get upset by reading a whole thread (although there are these fancy last-post buttons to avoid exactly that), BUT doing a research gets really messy if you have ten threads dealing with the issue and all of them differently.
Syndy/3 on 13/5/2011 at 10:17
Didn't TTLG also once have markers in posts to clarify which posts are new?
...
In fact I see now that they are still there. The new post icon
Inline Image:
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/images/statusicon/post_new.png is just so similar to the old post icon
Inline Image:
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/images/statusicon/post_old.png that it's barely recognisable. Especially with the alternating post backgrounds in similar colours.
Basically all you'd have to do is to make the new post icon clearly identifiable (red). Then no one will read old posts any more, thinking they are new ones. It would also be generally useful for navigating a thread.
Beleg Cúthalion on 14/5/2011 at 08:23
Please don't mix the ressurection of old threads per se with the purpose/sense of the actual post. Just for the record!
zombe on 22/5/2011 at 20:36
Quote Posted by Syndy/3
Didn't TTLG also once have markers in posts to clarify which posts are new?
...
In fact I see now that they are still there.
Very old threads often do not have the "you last read time" marker (iirc, unless you participated in the thread, the marker gets removed in a few months). => the markers you speak of are useless as reading a very old thread will mark the whole thread as "never seen any of it before".
