Closing Threads

[Kiltpin]

Hello Mods and Admins,

I was wondering if you might consider amongst yourselves a new policy. That is to say that 'One year after the last post is made in a thread, that thread will be closed'.

There is more than one reason I propose this -

1 - Today, someone has responded to a thread, where the last post was made in July 2009. So much has changed in our level of knowledge in the last seven years as to make any new posting irrelevant. Who knows if the OP is even still alive!

2 - Closed threads can still be read, it is not that the information is lost. If a member has relevant information ("I have his journal in my hands and he talks about his son.), then an Admin can re-open the thread for the discussion to continue.

3 - An OP should be able to request that their thread be closed. Once they have received the information that they require, the thread should not be allowed to disintegrate into "Oh, and here's another good tip". The tip might be vital to everybody, but no one will ever find it, if it is buried in another thread.

4 - People change their attitudes and thoughts and should not be held hostage to something that they said, or thought years ago.

I appreciate that it will mean extra work for someone(s).

Just a thought ...

Regards

Kiltpin

[Sue Mackay]

We'll discuss it on the Moderators' Forum, but my feeling is that it will not really be feasible. So many threads are posted it would be nigh impossible to check which ones had become a year old and close them. What we already do is point out, if the thread is an old one, if the original poster is no longer a member ( if this is the case the profile will say "guest"). Sometimes it can be valuable to update an old thread, as I have recently done with one of my own from nearly a decade ago! Any thread that is revived and is really irrelevant can be closed at that point.

[Lesley Robertson]

I have a few reasons why I will not be voting to do this.
1: Firstly, people do come along with fresh information. If the thread has been closed, they will have to start a new thread, and the search becomes fragmented over several threads. This means that some members may waste time search for information that has already been provided. Believe me, there is nothing more dispiriting than spending a hour or more on someone's search, only to be told "I knew that". That's why we have a 1 thread per research line rule.
2: The research is often of help to more than one member - nobody owns a thread, even if they started it, and it sometimes happens that another descendent of the same family turns up. We've even had someone turn up and prove definitively that the OP had made a fundamental error.
3: I wouldn't want to decide what's useful and what not. I don't see that whether or not the thread is closed makes any difference to "being held hostage" (I'm not sure what you mean by that). It often happens that someone knows of a source the OP didn't know about and therefore wouldn't ask about (that happened to me last year, and a search I'd given up on was solved).

Lastly...
4: The Mods are all (appointed) volunteers, there's not many of us and we have enough to do already.

[Squaredancer]

With you all the way on this, Lesley! Those of us who have been on here for years would be delighted if someone turned up with something useful to add (or an answer) to one of our very old threads. I think threads should only be closed if they're duplicated, or at the original poster's request. (I had to do that once after a discussion got very nasty. Fortunately that doesn't seem to happen these days )

[Wilkes_ml]

I'm also with Lesley...I have ongoing threads that I add to constantly, and will do for years to come, such as my travellers in the PRs and adult baptism threads which I hope will be useful to others maybe this year, maybe next, or maybe in 10 years.

I also update my old research threads when I come across new or additional evidence that I didn't know when I originally opened the thread.

I also have to agree that it can be frustrating to spend an hour searching to help someone only to discover they had already started a thread about the same person a few years earlier and that others had already given them the same information.

N.b It is always worth searching a posters previous threads to see if they are duplicating a previous post ...though I still forget to do that myself most of the time

[Squaredancer]

The mods are usually quick at stopping duplicated threads these days!

I'm thinking of contacting someone who replied on one of my old threads, but I found that it's been archived - if I post there will anyone see it?

[Lesley Robertson]

I have to acknowledge the help of that nice Mr Google - if something sounds familiar, he produces any replicates quite quickly... Of course, it helps a lot when members point them out, they don't always sound familiar!

I hadn't looked at the Archive before. You can answer posts (which is why a seriously old thread called "where to post" has now revived. Don't worry, I'll delete my reviving post later). Click on the thread, then on the blue text beside "view full version", and it opens as normal.

[geneius]

As has been pointed out older posts can be picked up via google, closing them is not necessarily a good idea, I spent an hour the other evening reading about Catherine Lewthwaite from Broughton Lancs, I think it was posted in 2008

Very informative and joining a now worldwide family together in their quest for answers, for me it is close to the area I research in and did have a name that was familiar to me but cannot remember whose wife!

I may not have seen the post had it been 'dispatched' to the archives!

Yes members do refer back to their earlier posts useful to be able to read what has already been written......

What an onerous task for a Mod /volunteer to vet each post and make a decision whether it is proverbially Dead or Alive should it go or stay and is it useful.......the posts seem to tick over OK together with the way the forum is rum.

Mods take a bow

[Sue Mackay]

I'm thinking of contacting someone who replied on one of my old threads, but I found that it's been archived - if I post there will anyone see it?

If you reply to an old thread then it appears in New Posts, and any contributors to the old thread receive a notification by e-mail.

All threads are in the Archives, though it tends just to be the older ones that are displayed that way on Google searches. If you click on Archive on the blue banner at the foot of the page, you will see that the very new DNA Forum with its recent threads are clearly visible near the top. It is just a convenient way of compressing the information for ease of searching if you can't find something via the Search button. Search is great if you know what you are looking for. The archive is a quicker way of browsing a particular forum to see if there are any thread titles of interest, which is another good reason for giving your threads meaningful titles and not just "help please".

[Pam Downes]

Basically, Kiltpin, the system has worked perfectly well for over eleven years, it ain't broke so it don't need fixing.

1 - Today, someone has responded to a thread, where the last post was made in July 2009. So much has changed in our level of knowledge in the last seven years as to make any new posting irrelevant. Who knows if the OP is even still alive!

I would say that it's exactly the opposite. There is now so much more information available that can be added to an old thread to make it easier to find you if a third person is 'search engine surfing' for a family name.

If we're informed that someone has passed away then it will be noted in their details on the left-hand side of the page. Similarly, if someone tells us that they're leaving the forum then we change their status to 'guest'.
In both instances their posts are left on the forum because they usually contain information which is still relevant. e.g. an 1891 census reference posted in 2006 is going to be the same census reference in 2016 - and 2026!

What is sad, is when a new poster revives an old thread thinking they've found a new cousin only for the OP not to know about the new post because they've either not set up the system to receive notification of new posts in a thread or because they've changed their email address without advising BG.

2 - Closed threads can still be read, it is not that the information is lost. If a member has relevant information ("I have his journal in my hands and he talks about his son.), then an Admin can re-open the thread for the discussion to continue.

And what a faff that will be.
First of all, the member would have to contact Admin/mod to say can we please open the thread. Admin/mod have to do the necessary, then write back to member saying 'thread open, OK to post'. A revived post from 2009 is an exception; revived posts between one and three years old probably occur more often than you think. And has already been pointed out, there are not many mods and we have enough to do without having to faff about doing totally unnecessary stuff such as closing and re-opening threads.

3 - An OP should be able to request that their thread be closed. Once they have received the information that they require, the thread should not be allowed to disintegrate into "Oh, and here's another good tip". The tip might be vital to everybody, but no one will ever find it, if it is buried in another thread.

OK, information requested received, and therefore in theory the end of the thread - but what if someone comes along in two years time and says 'I think we might be related'. If the thread has been closed how do they contact you easily? It's no good starting a new thread because you might not see it, especially if you only visit the forum once a week. So the person has to contact a mod, who has to re-open the thread, etc etc (see previous paragraph).
Research tips relevant for everyone usually get posted in relevant threads. Only very rarely do they get 'buried' in some random thread.

4 - People change their attitudes and thoughts and should not be held hostage to something that they said, or thought years ago.

If you don't want to be held hostage to any attitudes or thoughts then make sure they stay in your head and are not spoken out loud and recorded or (even worse) written on the internet.
By far the majority of the stuff on BG is factual. Yes, there are posts criticising various genealogy websites at times; usually with good reason because of actions taken by said websites at that time. I expect that most people are like me and feel that any comments they made at the time were justified.

Pam