Might it be possible to display an advisory message whenever someone posts on a very old thread? I've seen a few recently where people have responded to something posted a few years ago. On a SimFlight forum someone actually posted on a topic raised 11 years ago!

 

They have probably done it in all innocence not noticing the date of the last post after performing a search. With a advisory message they may still post but otoh may feel it's no longer appropriate.

 

Perhaps anything older than 6 months?

 

Just a thought. :smile:

 

 

I agree with Ray, it would be really nice to have some measure to prevent those thread revivals. I believe that some time ago threads that were inactive for some time (6 months, I think) were locked automatically. I remember asking why that feature was turned off, but I can't recall the answer. That might be helopful as well. Over at Aerosoft, for example this appears to work pretty well (with less traffic of course, so in case this feature costs performance, it doesn't hurt as much over there as it does here), and if people really feel like they need to contribute to an old locked thread, they have to contact a moderator to re-open the thread.

Ray for president!

 

:smile:

There is no such capability - post an advisory message - that is in-built or available to us as a mod to the base software. We can CLOSE all topics after a certain amount of days, but the very few incidents of users resurrecting old posts is rather miniscule and hardly a "major" issue. It may be an annoyance, but to have the lifetime of topics available to the entire community is far more important than what I would consider a very minor, minor, irritant that frankly can be ignored. In fact, having the entire thread of topics available and still available to reply to is what a community like this is all about, in my opinion. And finally, though maybe an irritant to a few, the additional burden it would place on our mods to open closed threads on request, again though minor, would be additional loads I don't want to impose on them. Please weigh the actual impact of what you are asking to change against other factors, such as openness, mod load, system modifications, etc., before you request them.

Fair comment Tom. I didn't know if you had the capability or not and I certainly wouldn't want to add to moderators workload. I simply asked because for all I knew it might have been a simple background action.

 

I've found myself reading a few threads and then noticed the date of the original discussion. Had I known the original post was so old I probably wouldn't have bothered reading it. Whilst not a big issue I have seen a few topics recently that have been resurrected - hence the post.

 

Craig, your estimation of me is appreciated. :smile:

Maybe the label on old topics could be changed to a coffin icon... (*joke*) :ph34r: