Need for a New Thread button?

[nick.crane]

I just had a newbie bump a 2 year old thread; admittedly to ask for help with a similar problem.
This is most often done by new users who are not yet aware of Daniweb rules.
However, unless I am mistaken, there is no way of starting a new thread when viewing an existing thread.
Since Google and other search engines lead new users to existing threads and not the forum start pages this seems like an omission.

Do you think that adding a "Start a New Thread" button (perhaps with the post and advanced buttons) might reduce such bumping by new users?

[Edit]
Just realised that there is the small link in the "Over 3 months" text that will start a new thread.
This is clearly not big enough.
Alternatively, hide the message window for very old threads with a button to open it if really necessary.

[Narue]

I may have a slightly better idea. Instead of making the new thread button more prominent, how about placing a date check script on the reply buttons? If the thread is older than N days, a nuisance popup could be used. The popup would give posters the option of creating a new thread (the default option) or confirming that they really want to reply to an older thread.

[cscgal]

> how about placing a date check script on the reply buttons
Because the majority of people use Quick Reply, not the full reply button to go to the advanced editor. The message that the thread is older than N days is located directly above the Quick Reply.

[Narue]

The message that the thread is older than N days is located directly above the Quick Reply.

And it clearly doesn't work very well judging by the number of bumped threads with a post that should be a new thread. :icon_rolleyes:

[cscgal]

Do we really get a significant number of bumped threads considering how many pageviews and new posts & threads we get daily as a whole? Is the ratio really much more than on other forums?

[WaltP]

Then hide the quick-reply on threads that are older than N days.

And from the standpoint of "significant number", as far as mods are concerned, yes.
And from the standpoint of "other forums", who cares. We are not "other forums". We are allowed to be better than them.

I worked with a warehouse storage system which guaranteed no more than 1% misstored (lost) merchandise. Sounds insignificant. When you calculated that 1% it came out to hundreds of pallets of merchandise. No longer insignificant.

[ggeoff]

Hi cscgal, Do we really get a significant number of bumped threads considering how many pageviews and new posts & threads we get daily as a whole? Is the ratio really much more than on other forums?

Well how do you know that would be posters are deterred? The site looks nice if you like purple. I am wary of purple, I prefer blue. But then why not use colour to help users make selections according to their needs. At present the website only uses mainly purple and grey. If Daniweb were Tesco they would be using colour and font size to assist users as Tesco users will be spending money.

Judging by the character of the posts, most users are not IT pros so why not make it easier for the majority of the users? It costs nothing. Why not ask Carl Neilson for an evaluation? My recent post has not had a reply, and although I am subscribed to replies, at least I think I am, I am checking for replies. Personally, I would arrange for a default: You will be notified of replies.

Cheers

Geoff

[cscgal]

> Then hide the quick-reply on threads that are older than N days.
Hmm ... Interesting. I will think about making it grayed out by default or something like that.

> And from the standpoint of "other forums", who cares. We are not "other forums". We are allowed to be better than them.
Yes, we should be better. But essentially I am also saying we need to be realistic. If this is a HUGEEEE issue for just about all other tech forums out there, it's not realistic for it to not be a problem at all for us. It is nice to know a starting point -- where we fall compared to everyone else out there -- so we know how much improvement really is an improvement.

> I worked with a warehouse storage system which guaranteed no more than 1% misstored (lost) merchandise. Sounds insignificant. When you calculated that 1% it came out to hundreds of pallets of merchandise. No longer insignificant.
But at least in that case you were able to quantify the problem at 1% and knew just how many that was. In this case, we're dealing with a VERY subjective couple of mods saying, "I've noticed more than I would like to see." I think a big part of setting a goal for improvement is actually sitting down and finding some way of calculating a starting point, knowing where we want to end up, and then figuring out what we need to do to get there.

I will dig deeper into this :)

> The site looks nice if you like purple. I am wary of purple, I prefer blue. But then why not use colour to help users make selections according to their needs. At present the website only uses mainly purple and grey.
To the amazement of many, a lot of thought and color theory went into using this shade of purple, along with our fonts and font sizes. A couple of years ago, we used to have each section of the site (Software Dev, Web Dev) a different color scheme based on what the particular audience within that section responded best to. Unfortunately we found that the pros didn't outweigh the cons of the complete brand experience and improving our overall brand marketing.

[nick.crane]

> Then hide the quick-reply on threads that are older than N days. Hmm ... Interesting. I will think about making it grayed out by default or something like that.

Hopefully this is easy to implement. Thank you for thinking about it anyway.
I only wanted to provoke some thought about this, so I will mark as solved.

[cscgal]

Well it's not quite solved ;) Because the thread bumping is still an issue. :)

[Narue]

Because the thread bumping is still an issue.

It seems to be getting worse, judging from the number of old threads I've had to split recently. Then again, it could simply come in waves like the usual homework questions.

[cscgal]

Keep in mind it's September, so the start of a fresh semester. Going to look into making the Start New Thread link on old threads larger.

[Nick Evan]

Yeah, like a fullscreen pop-up or something. Maybe then they'll get it :icon_smile:

[ggeoff]

Hi I just disagree with the message that users see when a thread is solved. Of course if a technical issue has been raised then a solution is quite likely to have been made and for someone to post a reply which can be really not a reply to the post but rather a question that would be better addressed by starting a new post. But other issues may benefit from being left open to replies or contributions? I still see, or rather do not see that Post a new thread is clearly visible to users. Why not use a larger font for those elements that it would be desirable to draw the user's attention to? For example font color green for a the post a new thread option? And a larger font? For example in the This thread is solved message that I see above the invitation to start a new thread is a simple underline. Why just an underline?