Reply to an old thread without raising it to the top?

Meta
#1

I was searching through content and came accross this topic of mine Extending the type field for user types? on reading it I see that its has largely being addressed through the introduction of cascades. I went to reply to the thread and get this message;

Revive this topic?

The last reply to this topic was almost 4 years ago. Your reply will bump the topic to the top of its list and notify anyone previously involved in the conversation.

Are you sure you want to continue this old conversation?

I have no objection to it informing those who already participated but do we really need to ;

bump the topic to the top of its list

I see value in redirecting users to the new facts, by replying with current info, but need only do it for people who took an interest, or activly participated in the post. New users may come accross it via a search but they do not have any updates noted.

Is there a way to achive this in Discourse?

#2

I did not know, but I found a discussion at the Discourse Forum.

Open the old thread and have a look, if you have the Toggle topic bump option?

image
image1628×950 119 KB

2 Likes
#3

Why concern about this. If I’m interesting in a thread’s title, I will click in. Otherwise I just skip it. No matter how old it is. Even there are tons of old threads, I can use mouse scroll to fast skip all uninterested titles.

2 Likes
#4

We have a really active forum. If people aren’t interested in something, it will be buried in 2 days. So there doesn’t seem to be any harm in bumping a topic. Maybe someone else will add additional info?

Also, our forum doesn’t seem to close topics. Which I like. Other forums close their topics after (by default) 30 days. It seems to be linked to the status of the posters, because other topics will be closed after 2 years – talk about opinionated!

1 Like
#5

If you happend to click into the long thread I recently edited you have to deal with a very long discussion which is mostly superceeded.

Keep in mind the way you use discourse may be different to others. I for one either read a thread I am involved in, or set it to “tracking” at a glance I can see what I have unread and can reliably participate in conversations. I dont make an assumprion a title tells me what I need to know. I have seen many missleading titles. I proactivly assist anyone in this forum so I need to be comprehencive.

#6

The “Toggle topic bump” can only be changed by users with trust-level 4, moderators and stuff. So I think in some cases it is OK to toggle this setting.

1 Like
#7

Agreed, keeping them open and available to be necro’d I think is very useful to others who want to revisit a topic after some time with new discoveries, in case anyone who posted to it originally never found the solution they were looking for.

I would wager the only need to close a post is if it is being locked by administration due to controversy or a set time-limit.

#8

Lets also not here if one must you can start a new topic and link to an old one, but presumably its because you want the new one noticed in the category its posted. This allows you to reference an old post without touching it and if you are not

users with trust-level 4

#9

Not quite sure I understand this quoted part, but to the rest, i agree.
Starting a new post and leaving the old one I imagine is best practice for keeping the user from needing to scroll allll the way down, or without disturbing the state that it was left in.

#10

When you use talk.tiddlywiki depending on your activity, or administrator intervention, you build up a trust level. Once it raises to each level you get more permissions, and level 4 allows you to stop it bumping a topic to the top due to a new reply.

#11

I see, we are in different roles. I mostly just wondering and share new plugins. You are in a more responsible position.

BTW, have you tried use in-browser AI to aggegrate whole thread? Firefox now have free genimy to use. I haven’t try that but that may solve the tracking problem. While Discourse might lazy-load old posts so it might not work.

#12

Good point. I agree and I get the same message a lot.

The question for me is: does bringing up an old thread to the top irritate others? It is for this reason that I often hesitate to post, quite frankly. I guess I’m better off. Is my post needed or even wanted? There have been a lot of great posts that are years old, but still relevant. Hence the need for repliying posters to point out things like: “You should check out this thread…”, etc…

Like SEO, TalkTW is somewhat based on popularity, “newness” and catchy tag lines. But this adds a lot of noise. And it compels some to broaden the spectrum of fields of interest. Maybe to attract the attention of the higher-ups? I don’t know. It’s a fine line: are we posting to the community or to the matters we’re addressing?

TalkTW offers dicussion on solutions. If feedback on old posts bumps it up to top spot, so be it. Most of us can filter that out. Moreso than the users of Intantgramme things of that nature.

Now, if one of my silly posts from the past was still generating discussion and make it consistantly to the top of the raster, I would be embarrassed and I’d want others to stop. But that doesn’t seem to happen a lot. Perhaps, as you said, more respected posters and moderators are able to control that.

Would be nice if TalkTW were a TiddyWiki itself. That way, we could go through seach queries and tags to get to the area we wanted. No one tiddler would dominate, really.

Well, that’s my take. Thank you for reading.

#13

It depends.

If the new post contains new insights or a solution to the OP (original post). Or if the new post gives an answer to an unresolved problem raised by the OP, then it’s probably OK to resurrect an old thread.

If the thread is already checked with a “resolved” flag. So if the original author tagged a post as an answer, it’s better to create a completely new thread.

If old threads are short eg: 3 or 4 short posts, it does not matter too much, if it is resurrected. It may be an inconvenience.

But if an old thread has 20 to 30+ posts, there has to be a real reason to bump it. That’s one reason, why we do not allow posts, that are shorter than 20 characters.

In this case it’s probably better to create a new thread, even if the question is very very similar to the old threads OP.

In our community, it is OK to ask similar questions again, after eg: 1 year. TW still changes, so there may be completely new answers to the same question. There are no stupid questions.

In the early days of this forum, there was a discussion, if we should auto-close threads, once they go “stale” for a certain time. It was decided, that we keep them open. So that’s the default now.

If bumping old threads starts to become a real annoyance, there is the possibility to change that setting.

2 Likes
#14

just ignore them ?
because …
what dose that message know about your topic ?

:sunglasses:

though tbh it annoying i appear to bump my topics by
editing my latest
hastily posted incoherent drivel
to be slightly less incoherent :thinking:

#15

I don’t think it’s too bad here.
On another forum I’m on it is very annoying as there are often posts that resurrect a two year old or more thread saying ‘it’s been over two years and i still can’t do this thing, this software is rubbish’ often someone points out it can be done but the angry poster never replies. Or ever contributes to another thread. It’s very odd.