Good idea! What do you think...no posts in 30 days lock 'em?

Problem is sometimes it's not digging up old threads.
New people come to this site all the time and when they discover the Forums they say "hay this is cool" so they may have something to say or just want to participate, fit in so to say...
There could be lots of reasons, so do you think we should stop them from enjoying what everyone else has enjoyed just because they discovered this site later then most or just got Freelancer recently or maybe they just got their first computer or just got connected to the INTERNET.
Maybe we should give people a chance to fit into the community and stop worrying about if someone posts in a topic, new or old...

Tough call either way. Gravedigging has it's merits for sure but if we're going to stay with the mindset of "people are new, give 'em a brea" then it should be across the board. Example...someone posts in a topic that hasn't had a reply is eons and they actually contribute to the thread then no one should be chastising them for digging up the thread. But then it becomes subjective if the post was in fact contributing. I C a moderating nightmare.

Tough call either way. Personally, I don't believe I for one have ever ripped into someone for digging up old threads. I don't see the harm in it. On one hand we as a community direct people to use the search engine to see if there's been a discussion in the past on a topic and then when they reply they get slammed for gravedigging. Can not have your cake and eat it too! I say let people reply to older posts. Exception...not adding to the thread only posting jibberish. That should be discouraged regardless of the age of the thread.

Just prune threads that are older then 2 months. Saves alot of server space.

yea and brings along the new problem of new lancers asking the same questions every 2 months..and other people getting tired off answering themm...entering a vicious circle

you can never win 'em all

Personally, I like the idea of locking threads that are > 2 months old.

Gravediggers are usually trolls with an agenda, in my experience, and the agenda is usually to re-start a controversial thread. How often do we see a thread in any of the Editing Forums, for example, where a modder is really going to get an answer 2 months later, and be paying attention?

And if the topic is... ah... merely entertaining, then is it a priority to allow people to bump it up whenever they troll to it, just to say "w0w d00d th@t wuz l1k3 r3@11y c001".

If it's vital information, then it should be stickied, which prevents it being locked, if it's set up correctly (I assume that this is a variant phpBB 'board here).

And pruning posts older than 60 days that aren't stickied... would greatly speed up the Forums, especially searches.

Does this mean that vital information might get lost? Yes. Changing 'board policy this way should therefore coincide with a post in the News asking everybody to go through the information on the 'boards, looking for vital topics of interest (mainly obscure modding info) that need to be saved from extinction, which then could be emailed to the people maintaining the modding information archives. A few of the most obscure things would get lost, but not most of the information that's been collected over the life of the board. And this could be taken as a chance to clean up and re-organize the existing tutorial threads, which (to be perfectly blunt) contain a lot of information that's out of date... for example, a lot of the articles refer to BINI, when almost every modder is using the FL SDK 1.3 nowadays...

Yes, I know that I'm basically asking the mods (who're already overworked) to put out a pretty big effort in coordinating such a changeover. But I think that the FL community of the 'boards could and would do most of the hardest work- searching the existing materials for vital items of interest to be saved. Sorting it and cleaning up the existing materials could be done over a much longer timespan, and once I've gotten Alpha Three of my mod done, I'd be willing to contribute (among other things, I'd like to write a new tutorial on how to build ships, as I've figured out some shortcuts that could save newbies a lot of pain and suffering).

So we should delete or lock every thread to stop the *ohh so rampant* grave digging? (light sarcasm?)

One or two come along every now and then - that is all.........hardly worth using a nuke to swat a fly over it is it.....or do you really think such drastic action is warrented?

For me, personally, its not - and never will be. People should be allowed to add worthwhile comments to old threads as its not likely to detract from the amazing quality of existing threads, and some may actually read stuff that is interesting which they had never seen before. Seeing one thread thats old amongst the plentiful new ones isn't going to cause your hair to fall out - even if it was a daily occurance. Heck, one of the newly raised ones started to get a post adding to the old discussion!

I do think that a majority of members blow things way out of all proportions - and make mountains out of molehills! The occasional surface of a year old thread doesn't mean we should delete most of the sites content, or work our butts off round the clock editing everything under the sun!!

*man - five edits for wrong words and bad spolling!*

*doh - six!*



Edited by - Chips on 11/12/2004 1:23:30 PM

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*man - five edits for wrong words and bad spolling! *

*doh - six!*

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Doh - Seven !

Doth mine wit escapeth thee?

What about the ones brought back, with a pure spam post. One of ff's thread was dug up and eggs posted usless drivile in it. My point being, yes, if they follow the thread topic, no problem, but, if they bumped it up just for attention and post count, locking and let it fall back down. Just 2 cents worth.

Edited by - Finalday on 11/12/2004 5:37:30 PM

You could put up a cautionary advice about grave digging in the rules and regs. I don't think it is such a big problem although we all of a sudden got a miniature rash of it this week.

Is there a way to make threads older than 60 days more "dim" in the subject heading? So that it visually implies that it is a "dead" thread?

i dont see much gravedigging, i usually see...1 a month, give or take...