This is something I’ve now seen happen multiple times that I feel needs to be addressed.
In some instances when posting a bug in #platform-feedback , the developer engagement team will dig out posts from years ago and either lock or merge your post into the ‘original topic’ about the post. This is problematic for a variety of reasons;
• When a post is merged into another topic, there is no ‘update’ that adds the new post into the ‘recent’ or ‘new’ sections of the website, essentially rendering the new post you made useless unless a member were to already know of the original posts existence.
• Some of these topics being referenced when locking/merging posts are years old and often contain old and outdated information about what a user is trying to report. An example of this I just recently saw was @Shedletskytrying to further spread awareness that the captcha system is broken, only to have his post locked and merged into a different post that’s nearly a year old.
• Necrobumps to old posts are usually considered unethical, and tend to catch unnecessary flack when all a user could be trying to do is follow the guidelines of not making a duplicate topic.
• Most duplicate posts tend to be locked, but not ‘unlisted’, which means that you can still find these locked posts using the search bar, which seems a little redundant if you are trying to keep the conversation to one topic.
Overall, I just think there should be a better way at determining what topics that parallel each other should stay and go. We certainly shouldn’t be locking down new posts and sending users to posts made nearly a year ago that are bearing little, if any, critical information.
This suggestion lacks reasoning, you’ve mentioned what you consider to be the problem but you’ve not really said why it should be different.
For example,
Why do people need to know of your new post, when an existing one they could find on the same topic exists? If your new post provides sufficiently new information then you should put it as a reply to the original topic. You don’t create new topics just to add new info to an existing topic - if that were the case the forum would be even more of a mess.
Write a reply on the original topic with up to date information if the core issue is still the same.
There’s a difference between a necrobump that essentially equates to “I have this problem too” versus “I have new information about this problem that wasn’t in the original topic that may help engineers fix the issue”. There’s nothing unethical about that. If there was, those topics would auto close like they do in the #collaboration categories. There’s a reason platform feedback topics remain open indefinitely.
This is good. If you described the issue in your topic heading well, then people will find your topic, see it was merged or linked to the original, and then go view the original. Useful if they are searching by date or you just happened to use a term that perhaps the original topic didn’t.
As far as I can tell, it sounds like you are just scared to reply to an old topic. There’s nothing wrong with it as long as you are adding new and valuable information. If what you’re adding to the existing issue is not sufficient enough for a post then it certainly shouldn’t have a whole new duplicate topic dedicated to it.
The reason post approval has been actively rejecting duplicate topics is because it makes it harder to search and divides the conversation about a bug or feature request between multiple threads. This may not sound too bad as a developer using the forum, but these thread is also used by Roblox engineers to create and assign tasks. If the forum becomes messy, their work board will become difficult to use and track. Necrobumps are fine to us as long as you have something to contribute, like why it should be fixed.
Consider flipping the point of view. You are a Roblox engineer, is it easier to have one thread or multiple threads on the same issue?
The thread you provided was problematic for more than being a duplicate. Even when there is no formal reply, it does not mean there have been no viewing by Roblox engineers, sometimes it can be easier to not reply in specific cases.
People across the forums actively report and deal with duplicate posts and it is not always right but the important thing is that we do more right than wrong.
For me, in a perfect world a Roblox engineer should be able to see a single thread on a single topic which gives them great information both in the original post and the replies to help deal with the issue.
Ultimately whoever you are, the posts and replies to topics new and old should add to the topic and help a Roblox employee seeing this issue. Put yourself in their shoes.