Close old threads? Options

[Brian Chandler]

spam

It's about time old threads were closed....

[Frederiek]

I agree, or at least that no replies can be added anymore after a certain amount of time has passed.

[pandy]

It wouldn't make any practical difference, not for you and not for us. The spammy posts will be made. In what thread they end up doesn't really matter.

Personally I don't like closing threads because sometimes useful things are added after a long time. I don't like forums with lots of closed threads either. It gives an unfriendly impression, I think. All the threads beginning "I had to start a new thread because my original one was closed..." don't really add to the search friendliness and are a bother to read, having to look up the old thread. That's just my opinion, of course.

I know I'm not going to become a busybody moderator asking if the problem is solved so I can lock the thread. Apart from not wanting to be a party-pooper, that would involve more work, not less.

What we consider spam is usually removed fairly quickly. I don't think anyone's eyes will bleed from seeing the occasional spam.

[Darin McGrew]

I know there are many ways to moderate a forum, but I'm used to seeing threads closed upon request of the original poster, when the thread is hopelessly off-topic, or when the thread has become persistently abusive.

In all 3 cases, the moderator would already be reading the thread, so it's simple enough to close it right then. But I agree with pandy: I'd rather not spend time proactively hunting down stale threads to close them.

[Frederiek]

Fair enough. Thanks.

[Brian Chandler]

Huh? How about a program:

foreach(thread)
{ if (date(lastpost(thread))) < -20days) close(thread); }

I hadn't conceived that anyone would be able to conceive of doing such a thing manually.

I disagree with Pandy -- because these spam entries are often in ancient threads that were interesting but long forgotten, it's not obvious that they are spam, particularly as the first thing that comes up is the original post.
If the spam were all in recent threads, chances are I would be reading the thread anyway.

[pandy]

I don't care if you agree with me or not.

[pandy]

Oops, that sounded different than I meant it to. I meant that I'm not going to do it.

[Christian J]

I'm not fond of locked threads either, for the same reasons pandy mentioned.

these spam entries are often in ancient threads that were interesting but long forgotten, it's not obvious that they are spam, particularly as the first thing that comes up is the original post.

If you go directly to the latest post in a thread you'll see wether it's spam or not right away, saving you from re-reading an old thread until you reach the last spam post.