Are the oldest topics deleted?/What to do with old topics (SOLVED)

[Yannick]

Hello,
Are the oldest topics deleted ?

I know it is an option on most forums, that a topic with no new answer since n month are deleted, but was it your choice here ?

[Eich]

I've considered it, but I haven't started doing it yet.
I plan on starting soon, as long as the threads don't look important. For instance, the untouched "Tuuri character development thread" wouldn't be deleted, because it is still a very relevant thread. 

[Sunflower]

I've considered it, but I haven't started doing it yet.
I plan on starting soon, as long as the threads don't look important. For instance, the untouched "Tuuri character development thread" wouldn't be deleted, because it is still a very relevant thread.

I second your policy, Thor.  Some sad little threads probably need to be put out of their misery, but I'm glad you're keeping revivable topics open.  (Personally, I'm waiting for the day when Tuuri does something heroic, like teaching Emil how to drive.  Her sacrifice of time, patience, and torn hair will pay off when she [thinks she] gets the Rash and he has to drive the Catmobile out of danger.  Then she'll become the first person ever to survive the Rash, and her blood plasma will become a life-saving serum.  Hey, a girl can dream...)

Anyway, the nice thing about this forum set-up is that neglected threads just drift to the bottom of the page where they don't bother anyone. 

To my mind, the major issue with neglected threads is if the topic comes up again and people start duplicate threads without looking for "prior art."  I don't think that's become much of a problem yet, though -- do you?  Some *posts* have become outdated with the march of time (e.g. "What makes the Catmobile run?"), but they were perfectly legitimate theories in their day.  So I think they should stay as part of our ever-growing archive.

[Fimbulvarg]

I second your policy, Thor.  Some sad little threads probably need to be put out of their misery, but I'm glad you're keeping revivable topics open.  (Personally, I'm waiting for the day when Tuuri does something heroic, like teaching Emil how to drive.  Her sacrifice of time, patience, and torn hair will pay off when she [thinks she] gets the Rash and he has to drive the Catmobile out of danger.  Then she'll become the first person ever to survive the Rash, and her blood plasma will become a life-saving serum.  Hey, a girl can dream...)

Anyway, the nice thing about this forum set-up is that neglected threads just drift to the bottom of the page where they don't bother anyone. 

To my mind, the major issue with neglected threads is if the topic comes up again and people start duplicate threads without looking for "prior art."  I don't think that's become much of a problem yet, though -- do you?  Some *posts* have become outdated with the march of time (e.g. "What makes the Catmobile run?"), but they were perfectly legitimate theories in their day.  So I think they should stay as part of our ever-growing archive.

Must they all be deleted though? Some of them could be useful in the future so it might be better to just close them and keep them around as zombie archives. If some newbie asks an already tackled question linking to an old thread is an easy way to handle it.

[ThisCat]

How about threads with enough replies are not deleted?

[Nimphy]

As the people above already said, the old threads could be useful for newbies to retrieve information, and also interesting to read, sure, "What drives the Catmobile" is outdated, but still! It's interesting to go back and see how the old theories were wrong or right.

[Eich]

What I planned on doing initially would have us keeping old threads as long as they're relevant and original.  That means that, even if they had old or outdated information, they could still be kept around.  That way, duplicate threads can be dealt with in advance, and people can just post in the older threads with a bump post (one of the rules, if you remember, is to use the search function before creating a new thread, to see if it already exists or not.  The search function here isn't the greatest, but it's functioning.  That rule is meant for the days when the forum has been around for a long time, but it still applies, especially for newcomers).  Even if the Tuuri thread doesn't get posted in for the next ten billion years, I won't be deleting it, because it's still relevant and it's still the original topic.

[noako]

What I planned on doing initially would have us keeping old threads as long as they're relevant and original.  That means that, even if they had old or outdated information, they could still be kept around.  That way, duplicate threads can be dealt with in advance, and people can just post in the older threads with a bump post (one of the rules, if you remember, is to use the search function before creating a new thread, to see if it already exists or not.  The search function here isn't the greatest, but it's functioning.  That rule is meant for the days when the forum has been around for a long time, but it still applies, especially for newcomers).  Even if the Tuuri thread doesn't get posted in for the next ten billion years, I won't be deleting it, because it's still relevant and it's still the original topic.

Could they perhaps be locked or something? I mean - sure they COULD but... should we? I wouldn't be suggesting this otherwise, but at this one forum I visited often some newbies started commenting in age old posts, not with anything special, only with short sentences such as "haha lol, sounds good" or something like that. Bumping old threads just for that isn't a crime but it sure was annoying.

[Yannick]

As long as space is not an issue, I think it is good to keep the old topics!

I know a forum that always look empty as topics are deleted each month:
it is pretty sad to take time to writte something and then 1 month latter > adios > nothing  :'(

(if space latter become an issue, contact me, I might help you)

[Panzer_Engel]

Naoko makes a good point about Necromancy. It won't be a problem for a while, but it might be an idea to decide on a policy to deal with it now, before it does. Such as; "All threads which attract no replies for more than 'x' will be reviewed, and deleted or archived. All archive threads will be left in place for reference, but locked. Archive threads may be unlocked later if circumstances change at the moderators judgement.

[Richard Weir]

Could they perhaps be locked or something? I mean - sure they COULD but... should we? I wouldn't be suggesting this otherwise, but at this one forum I visited often some newbies started commenting in age old posts, not with anything special, only with short sentences such as "haha lol, sounds good" or something like that. Bumping old threads just for that isn't a crime but it sure was annoying.

I would feel that comes under "spamming" or "zero content posts" rather than needing to be treated as an issue with allowing necro-posting. It's just as annoying when it happens in live threads!

[Sunflower]

Naoko makes a good point about Necromancy. It won't be a problem for a while, but it might be an idea to decide on a policy to deal with it now, before it does. Such as:
"All threads which attract no replies for more than 'x' will be reviewed, and deleted or archived. All archive threads will be left in place for reference, but locked. Archive threads may be unlocked later if circumstances change at the moderator's judgement."

That sounds like a good policy to me, especially since it's merely reviewing defunct threads for possible archiving/deletion, not automatically locking them. 

I realize we're as yet a long way from having lots of duplicate or zombie threads, but it's prudent to think ahead. 

My only other major experience with discussion boards was when my former company adopted Jive for knowledge sharing (and for a ragtag collection of other communications things).  My employer took a hands-off, "let a thousand flowers bloom" policy, which was great in some ways.  But there were no content moderators (as opposed to a couple of IT guys, who were never able to keep on top of all the crashes and patches in the Jive software). 

So there were a lot of unanswered "help" questions, overlooked "how-tos," zombie threads, duplicates, etc. -- a big waste of time and effort.  I would sometimes step in to share answers and tips, put similar threads in touch with each other, and so forth.  But "care and feeding of internal Jive users" wasn't part of my job description, so I couldn't afford to spend a lot of time at it.  (As opposed to writing jolly things about the wonderful world of business analytics software...) 

[Eich]

You know that little thread in the SSSS board positing a wiki?  That would qualify for deletion.  It's totally extraneous, pretty sure it's already locked, taking up space that could be useful.  Ultimately, it amounted to nothing, so things like that definitely get the trash treatment.  I should probably rephrase my idea to something like that.  If it's totally purposeless, and just doesn't belong on the forum, is everyone okay with deleting a thread?  That's kind of an ambiguous rule...  I should probably come up with a better way to phrase that to make it more concrete... 

[Sunflower]

I'm going to nominate a couple of other threads for freezing/deletion:

Latest Page Discussion, http://ssssforum.pcriot.com/index.php?topic=6.0
This got a lot of traffic in the forum's first few days.  But its last post was Sept. 4!  And most of the posts were regarding possible forum rules, which have now been settled.
It does have some valuable posts.  But I think those would be more appropriately housed here in this board, since they relate to forum best practices, not actual SSSS content.

And "Day Zero", which only has 3 replies.  Besides, I believe Minna has stated that Day Zero was sometime in October of no-particular-year in the present.  (There was another thread somewhere speculating exactly WHICH year = 0, and I think that deserves to be kept open.)

Maybe also "Favourite Pages," here:  http://ssssforum.pcriot.com/index.php?topic=53.0
Nobody ever replied to the founding post.  Awwww.  OTOH, if you think somebody might (since it strikes me as a perfectly legit topic), then let it live.

[FrogEater]

I'm thinking of this: create, in this subforum, a sticky subtopic for thread deletion.
The title should be clear and compelling, such as 'These threads will be deleted if nobody objects'.
There would be one brief post per candidate thread, clearly stating the limit date to object (2 or 3 weeks from post publication, for instance). At the expiration date, in the absence of objection, both the thread and the corresponding post would be removed.
Sounds practical to you?