311110 Fri Jul 21 10:25:25 -0700 2006 13 30 Site Talk 0 1758350 Hi all, not sure there's much you can do about this, but on the LA board there are three topics on Ethiopian food at the top of the board, two of which appear to be old, old threads that have bounced to the top of the page. They seem to have gotten to the top of the board via current responses thereto, but their presense is a little cluttered. Should something even be done about it? It makes the board confusing, a little, but in some ways it's nice to see that people are using the search engine and getting access to the "old dirt" so to speak. But it does make for a redundant LA board, with three threads on the same topic, two from years ago, at the top of the page. Interested to hear your thoughts on how to handle such situations. Even though they are older, could the threads be combined? Would that mess with integrity too much? DanaB Fri Jul 21 10:25:25 -0700 2006 11028 DanaB 1 1758360 If I were asked to come up with a way to handle this, I'd put a small slider or the like on topic lists allowing users to filter by age of the original post, i.e. "Show posts going back _____ days/weeks/months". This would do some pretty awful things to site performance though, not that I'd expect that to be a big problem for C|Net and its racks and racks of servers... Fri Jul 21 10:57:32 -0700 2006 1758350 10465 hatless 1 1759129 A few people have come out in favor of the old threads being dredged up and have interesting arguments to support their position. Maybe for those of us who've been using this for years, it seems confounding and a waste of time (reading through the old posts to get the context of the new---which is often either concurrence or a request for an updated review). I usually just keep the board tuned to "Date Started" and don't look at the "Latest Reply" posts page. Fri Jul 21 18:07:02 -0700 2006 1758350 10373 Mrs Fang 1 1759152 There was a posting on the late, lamented, Shane's Bakery in my neighborhood that mysteriously reappeared on the Outer Boroughs board's Hot Posts without having had a new post in over 4 months. I responded to it before noticing that fact, but I do wonder why and how things like this happen. Fri Jul 21 18:18:35 -0700 2006 1758350 13481 Woodside Al 1 1759896 In some cases it seems really odd -- like someone who just moved to a neighborhood two years ago posted looking for restaurants in that neighborhood, and then people recently started adding to the thread as if that person was still looking two years later. I guess posters who use the search function need to learn to evaluate whether they are adding to a still-useful discussion or whether it would be better to just start a new thread. Dana is right, some of these old threads are really distracting, and some have too many old responses to be useful. Fri Jul 21 23:12:40 -0700 2006 1758350 12460 Chowpatty 1 1760593 One reason the old posts come up is because the search feature is working well - pulling up old troves of still relevant info. In some instances it makes sense to update these - if info appears valuable, places have closed, etc. In others, it makes no sense. Posters need to use there judgment about where to put their new input - my vote is for chosing the best, most relevant place and not making multiple posts of the same info. My sense is that the multiple posts are often the work of new posters, placing their queries wherever they might be relevant. It seems as though they should be encouraged to post only in one place instead of in multiple possibly relevant threads. Sat Jul 22 14:30:48 -0700 2006 1758350 11130 jen kalb 1 1761371 Yeah - I did notice a thread in the LA board (the cheesesteak thread) that got bumped up for a day or so before I actually noticed a new post added. (And I did scan the ENTIRE thread looking for new posts. I did not see one.) Sun Jul 23 01:22:00 -0700 2006 1758350 13650 bfez 1 1776050 There should be an easier way to see the new posts only, such as is easy to do in boards that use Invision software. If there is, all the objections to wading through old posts become moot. The option of a "Standard" format for threads based purely on a strict chronology helps, too. Sun Jul 30 04:35:23 -0700 2006 1758350 17058 Pan 1 1778325 I just had that on the new york outer boros board (kew gardens) and the most current reply on that was "3 months ago" (I think it would also be easier to read with time/date rather than "___months ago", or "__hours ago". I don't find many new entries with the new format. Mon Jul 31 19:03:00 -0700 2006 1758350 13100 hana 1 1779036 My current theory on this is that someone hits "reply" to the thread or to one of the posts, then navigates elsewhere -- so no thread updates, but the act of clicking "reply" causes some "last edited date" somewhere in the database to get updated. I'd say hyperactive database trigger, but that'd be way too geeky. Mon Jul 31 23:03:45 -0700 2006 1758350 10811 Das Ubergeek 1 1780544 I would love it if they could lock down a thread older than X months. X=6? 12? Whatever, certainly no more than a year. Some of the old threads coming up are three years old! It is great that those old posts are still available for reference purposes, but to add a new response to an old thread? Silly. Tue Aug 01 18:11:20 -0700 2006 1758350 11148 Alcachofa 1 1782120 Yeah, there's a four-year-old thread about restaurant parking at the top of the Not About Food board right now. I suspect that people respond to posts without realizing how old the posts are. I do find it annoying. I can see the benefit of bringing back some old topics, but I'd rather see more new threads! Wed Aug 02 11:32:26 -0700 2006 1758350 14139 Kagey 2 1783365 Well I wasn't around 4 years ago... so perhaps it's just a perspective thing... but you can also use the failed NBC catch phrase of "It's New To You!" ;) --Dommy! Wed Aug 02 19:34:41 -0700 2006 1782120 10659 Dommy 2 1783889 What's time-sensitive about the topic of restaurant parking? I just don't understand your objection. Wed Aug 02 22:24:48 -0700 2006 1782120 17058 Pan