Three months warning

[jonsca]

Is that "this thread is over three months old" warning new(it's possible I totally missed it before)? Either way I like it!!

[jasimp]

It's quite old.

[jonsca]

Dang, I'd only seen the this thread is closed message.
I was hoping "they" would put something stronger in place because I can't stand the 4 year old nicely resolved and already complete threads with the "I want the C++ codez for [canonical pedagogical program here]" tacked on the end of it.
Well, my apologies for being a "day" late (and definitely a dollar short) on noticing that (but maybe it's good cause I got to air my grievance about resurrected threads).

[jbennet]

Yeah, its ancient.

[jonsca]

LoL oh well. *Gets in time machine to not post this thread in the first place. Thinking about it, I, by and large, read new(er) threads. Sorry again for taking up your time with this then.

[Dani]

No worries ... we always love feedback so anytime you have anything to say, please be my guest ... and know that you're being heard. :)

[Ancient Dragon]

No worries ... we always love feedback so anytime you have anything to say, please be my guest ... and know that you're being heard. :)

Yea, right. Like you ignoring this thread.

[jephthah]

why not save everyone the hassle and FORCE CLOSE all threads with >3 months of inactivity.

[~s.o.s~]

...because there is always more than one solution & more than one way to do things. Technical discussion never die out and there is always room for contributions; though I must agree this involves a bit more housekeeping effort on part of the moderators.

[jephthah]

i disagree. for the context of an internet forum, three months is plenty of time to get meaningful responses.

every time that I've seen an old post revisited, it's just some variant on "ME TOO". it's really a waste of time and space. i personally hate reading a thread only to find afterward that it's three years old.

[~s.o.s~]

> For the context of an internet forum, three months is plenty of time to
> get meaningful responses

What about posts which don't get solved or don't receive event a single reply? There have been instances of some good replies streaming in after as late as an year.

Let's consider this scenario; a certain person is currently facing a problem & stumbles upon a Daniweb dicussion which doesn't have the entire solution, but enough to help him get to the solution he desires. In that case, it very much makes sense that the person might post the solution here which might in turn help out those who come to this forum facing the very same problem.

> every time that I've seen an old post revisited, it's just some
> variant on "ME TOO"

It's a kinda sad that the ratio of helpful/useful bumps to useless bumps is very low, giving people the impression that thread bumps are *always* useless.

Of course, this is all IMO and YMMV. ;-)

[jonsca]

I know it's semi-possible to do this by hand (and I'm sure everyone's always looking for an excuse to overhaul the system, not), but a system where you could cite other threads (say max 5) and "continue" them without having to stomp on the initial thread. That way there are prune points if a thread gets "contaminated."

It's hard to tell where to draw the line with bump-type posts. It seems like 8 times out of 10 they are totally useless, 1 time out of 10 it's borderline (someone's put something together for a request that's long passed, someone has an opinion on the original post) and 1 time it's a clear and cogent addition. I've gotta believe that admins and mods give more than 110% already so asking them to make a judgement call in situations like this might be unreasonable.

I haven't been here very long (not long enough to have seen that notification before, lol, still can't forgive myself) and I like this community quite a bit, but I wish some (small number of) users would take some more pride.

(steps off soapbox, cue patriotic music) kidding, all of the above IMHO!

[jephthah]

What about posts which don't get solved or don't receive event a single reply? There have been instances of some good replies streaming in after as late as an year

...

okay, so it's the all-inclusive approach.

the rationale is that every so often someone has something useful to say, so we'll deal with 99 useless posts so we don't lose that 1 good one. i disagree with that rationale, but arguing it is now just a matter of preference.

so, that will be fine. but when i create my own online community, i'll do it differently. :P

[Narue]

>so we'll deal with 99 useless posts so we don't lose that 1 good one.
The mods can clean up any messes. I've been on forums where threads were automatically closed after thirty days, and it was a somewhat annoying feature. Just because something sounds good in theory doesn't mean it works well in practice.