Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

The current policy is usually to revive an old thread rather than start a new one with the same topic, even if it's been over a year since it's been posted in. But, as I remarked in another thread:



Well, this is that poll. Now, I haven't run this by the other mods or anything, so I have no idea whether or not they would act on the results. So for now, that's all it is: a poll. But there you have it.

- Kef

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I say we start a newt thread, unless, you know the ond one has like, one or two pages.

Depends. How old is the old thread?

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New thread should be kept. It will look more like a new opportunity to post your thoughts and less like a worn out, killed topic.

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Depends on how old it is. If it's, say, more then a month old, go ahead and start a new one.

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I don't really see why it matters how old it is. There's a thread about it, and that discussion is still valid; I don't see why it shouldn't be put in the old thread.

EDIT: To answer a concern brought up in then other thread, if a user bumps a thread without adding anything to the topic, their post is deleted and they are told not to do that. That's how we always deal with things like that.

I said other. Main reason being that, it really depends on the nature of the topic and who posted in it before (people who are still around, or mostly people who have left) and if the person who revived it is making a legit connection with a previous thing or wants to come at it from a new angle or what. So for other: case-by-case mod discretion taking the intent of the new poster into account.

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ATTN: LOWER BOARD USERS HAVE MOVED TO ANOTHER FORUM. COME JOIN THE FUN!

Bump the old topic. Less clutter, less confusion.

I'm with Inverse on this one. This really shouts out casework to me. Like IT said, it depends on a number of things, including the age of bump'd thread, the content of the post bumping the discussion, whether or not there is a desire to continue discussion, and I suppose the spammyness of the original thread as a whole to begin with (a meaningful post in a spam thread is probably still spam).

What I think would work out well would be to just sit back and let what happens happen, with basically one of the following courses of action:

A ) Old topic gets bumped, discussion is revived: leave it be.
B ) Old topic gets bumped, discussion is still dead: zap post, let discussion fall away.
C ) Old topic gets bumped, generates discussion, but in a different direction than the original discussion: split and form new thread.
D ) New topic gets created: give an ABP'd and see what happens, which could result in
- a return to A, B, or C, or
-the new thread stays and discussion remains there as opposed to the old, apparently moldy discussion.

No matter which way it went, there would have to be minimal griping about it, that is for sure.

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Okay, we need a Bureaucrat in here.

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That doesn't address my points, though, which I'll quote again: "Big threads tend to stifle any potential further discussion. (Their size can be intimidating, and people will have a tendency to not want to revisit parts of the older discussion.)"



I think the most important thing is whether or not the forum members are likely to remember the discussion. I think the more likely the discussion is to have been forgotten, the better an idea it is to restart it from scratch. For instance, "Creationism vs. Evolution" in R&P probably shouldn't be restarted from scratch, 'cause that thread is like an R&P legend or something. But other than rare exceptions like that, for purposes of example, I'd say maybe six months or older counts as "REALLY old". (Really, even three months is pretty long in internet years.)

BTW, I don't think people should vote "It depends" on the poll if you mean "It depends on how old it is." We're talking REALLY old here. Once common sense tells you that something is "REALLY old", its exact age doesn't matter so much.

- Kef

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I say give the old thread some CPR, depending on how old it is. 6 Months+, just make a new one, maybe merge them after a page or so.

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I think it depends on how useful the old thread is. For example, if the wii thread died for a year, and someone wanted to post about a new one, I'd say it would be better to revive the old one since it has a lot of useful info, like friend codes, game reviews, etc.

If, however, some other thread that doesnt have any useful infor in it dies for a while, it's just as good to start a new one.

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