It’d be nice if I were wrong but as of the last time I complained about it the only person who received notice of a “Reply as new topic” topic was the poster who created the post that was replied to. So if somebody decided to fork “Count to ten thousand” by replying as a new topic to @chgoliz’s last post then only she would get a notification. I, as the topic creator, would not get any notification and anyone watching the original game would not get any notification.
Would it be possible to give Regulars the ability to re-open non-boing topics that have been auto-locked?
Yeah, I confirmed with the Discourse folks it doesn’t currently notify. I’ve asked them to change that.
Unfortunately, there’s no way for the system to differentiate closing reasons, so this would allow all topics to be unlocked, even ones closed by mod action. We’ll happily and swiftly re-open for you if there’s a topic that requires it - just message us. But for most topics (non-game, non-special purpose), if they became stale and close, just fork them.
I’ve gone ahead and made this change active, though I’m not sure when the system is actually going to do its thing. I presume end of day, perhaps.
Could we please exempt the image bank threads in the meta category? They don’t tend to get steady traffic but I think they’re useful enough to stay open.
I don’t like this at all. Is it actually a problem here to have spammers necromancing old topics? If so I’ve never seen it happen.
Maybe instead of just auto-closing old topics, give some regulars extra moderator powers to deal with these topics if this happens. There’s this woefully underutilized TL4 after all – maybe promote some of us so we can help keep order around here and take some work off the admins’ laps.
I follow many old topics that don’t get much traffic and it’s always delightful to see them resurrected.
It also breaks any topic monitoring as mentioned before which is a big deal for those of us that can’t keep up with all of the BBS traffic but are attached to some specific threads.
That’s why I have to ask if this is actually a real problem or a perceived one?
Spreading some TL4 love could help with the headaches if this is a big problem that’s just hidden from us plebs. I know I’m not the first one to propose this, either.
I feel the same way. For me the feeling’s the same as when you’re cruising down the highway and you look a couple lanes over and there’s someone you know. Well that’s a nice surprise.
i don’t understand the implication here. You don’t see the problem so it doesn’t exist? Or that I’m acting in bad faith and inventing a problem that doesn’t exist?
I could just as easily argue that you’re working from the position of a perceived issue as well, since the number of threads with no posts that are ever resurrected again beyond a post or two is pretty miniscule from my investigating of the subject.
I presume, like most, you’d like to see BBS stay around. Part of my goal is to ensure that happens without adding additional work for the mod team. I’m not convinced that resurrecting an old topic (and having new posters read through the whole thing) is somehow better than starting a new one if the old topic was dormant for a month or more, anyway.
There are some contextless threads (iike gif posts, and likely some games) where exemptions make sense. If there are more, we’ll make them. Discussion is an ever-evolving medium, topics move on, and the pool of open threads to monitor needs to remain manageable, not grow to infinity over time.
Yep, agreed. Purpose-built threads like that without needed context make sense to keep open, like memorial threads, image threads, etc - I’ll be sure those aren’t auto-closed (or if they are, we’ll reopen them).
No. I never said or implied any of these things. Despite my problems with occasional heavy handed and very unfair moderation, I find this place to be pretty well run. I don’t have many complaints. I apologize if I made it sound like I was trying to pick a fight because I’m not.
Several of us have enumerated some good reasons why we don’t like the idea and how it breaks our BBS workflows. I’m just trying to better understand the motivations here.
Well, look at it this way. The authors choose to close boing threads because they believe discussion should be fluid and move on from older posts. The vast majority of community-created posts are the same - they were a discussion that has moved on. There are exceptions, and I will personally work to both ensure those are not disrupted, and to try and have the Discourse team provide better notification when closed topics are used to create new topics.
