I’ve noticed that in some posts, people necrobump posts that are extremely old with (usually) useless information.
This is the case when:
A previous bug has surfaced again (e.g. a connection problem)
Old posts come up in search results
Old posts are recommended at the bottom of the page
Some responses are useful, but others aren’t. When I’m talking about a previous bug, it can be reported again so that it can be recognised fully. Posting in an older topic may have irrelevancy in regards to the newer version of the bug.
Putting replies to old posts through Post Approval (if this is even possible with Discourse) would hopefully limit the problem and encourage more constructive discussions on the forum, opposed to posting on old topics for the sake of posting.
I have something similar to this, when I was wanting to post a feature request PA would not let me create a new topic, they insisted I post on an older topic. All of these topics were several years old, with the newest one being from a year ago.
One of my problems with this is if the post is from a year ago and nothing was acknowledged about it, how do I know someone is going to see MY feature request? And what if I wanted something different from this old topic? But, my questions were unanswered, and it was still only submitted as a reply to that topic.
Anyway, I agree with this topic as some of us (New Members, or whatever we’re called now) will go to older topics just to post something to avoid post-approval, and sometimes this adds nothing relevant to the topic and gets in the way of someone who is searching the forums to find help with something.
I’ve also seen a lot of your posts on here and would like to thank you for contributing to the community.
That’s odd. One of my recently published topics was not too dissimilar to a previous request (as noted in the post), but they decided against putting it on a 5 year old topic, and instead put it on a new one- which made a lot of sense and I’m grateful for it.
This, but also when there was an issue with the servers (or something like that), people flooded an old topic and it was noted by someone. I don’t think it’s available now because it was locked but it was fairly useless, seeing as someone could’ve made a new topic. Of course, Members (previously New Members) can’t do that because the bug would most likely be fixed by the time of the request being approved.
DET usually catches necrobumps quite quickly and they don’t do as much damage as a miscategorized/low-effort topic so I don’t think this is necessary myself. Post approval already has too much work so any workload increases (generally we want opposite) should have very meaningful impact, and I don’t think this will have.
If the response is not constructive (no use cases, or no significant content (“this is still happening” and nothing else), or is off-topic (different/new bug)) then make sure to flag it, then the DET will handle it.
@BIoximus Bumping is fine if you add constructive content to a topic. It’s not like any kind of post on an old topic is necessarily a bad post. There are very valid reasons to bring old topics back up. This topic seems to be talking about cases where the bumps are for bad reasons (as above).
@buildthomas I completely agree but I still find that some users get away with this as the moderation doesn’t really pick up the fact It’s kinda just spam. Like for example I’ve seen a lot of pointless celebrations coming out recently on topics like Introducing Grass even tho that topic hasn’t been active users that still probably know about this feature comment things like “Awesome! I will use this for my game!”. It might seem harmless at first but in the end it clogs up the Forum instead of posting their cool creations maybe just make them like it or make a topic in What are you working on currently? (2020), cool creations, or even just liking the post to show your support.
@Polyheximal Over all I believe this is a good idea but instead of post approval I would have a new team called something like. “Old Topic Recovery Approval” Recovery mainly because you’re brining the topic back to life even if it is for a little while. Well I hope this helped, from John.
In general, I find that whenever it comes to post approval, the team tends to turn down any proposal to add more to their workload. And for good reason! I’ve heard it from the post approval team many times that they feel flooded with approval topics already. Besides, I’m not sure this is as big of an issue as many other problems that plague the forum, and as such feel maybe it’s better to focus our attention elsewhere.
This is a legitimate concern, and if I had more time would respond in full. I probably will edit this reply later to include a more in-depth discussion, so forgive me. However, I wanted to agree with @buildthomas before I lost my chance.
I do see a lot of uncontributive and bland content only being used to bump a certain topic. Please don’t do this, it’s annoying to see 4 year old threads in our feeds. I would let it slide only if it’s adding contributive/constructive content to the thread.
I support this to come, some of the new members (not regulars or members, just new members) bump this and it’s honestly so so so annoying.
Then potentially locking threads after a while (automatically) would help the issue. It would prevent useful info being added but that isn’t common place on necroposts anyways.
I’d rather have a simple warning on older posts when you try to reply saying “This topic is x days old, are you sure you want reply? Keep in mind that if it has no significant content it will be removed.” that stays ontop of the reply box.
Adding more work to Post Approval would only lead to them being overloaded and would end in them not being able to review actual posts.
I don’t believe it is a good idea because again, it would prevent posts that may actually contribute on topics not counting it would still generate more work to post approval that will need to approve the new posts that are basically duplicates of the old posts.
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