Why keep duplicate threads

Slyde · Guru Joined: 14 Jul 2003 Posts: 314

This is to the mods/admins, Why keep duplicate threads? Seems like a waste of resources. Wouldn't it be easy to just delete them.

antik · Apprentice Joined: 01 Oct 2002 Posts: 212

charlieg · Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2004 8:00 pm Post subject:

If you send something to /dev/null, you can never get it back. And moderators are only human, they do make mistakes.
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charlieg · Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2004 8:04 pm Post subject:

Oh, and also so that people who post the dups don't go searching for their thread being unable to find it. They find it in 'Dups' and hence know it's been already asked. Deleting the thread would be like deleting duplicate bugs on bugzilla, people would just repost them.
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slimsam1 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 13 Aug 2003 Posts: 130

Because the fancy linux server we're on can handle them without any problem.

nerdbert · l33t Joined: 09 Feb 2003 Posts: 981 Location: Berlin

gsfgf · Veteran Joined: 08 May 2002 Posts: 1266

hopstah · Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2004 10:28 pm Post subject:

also, i think a purging of posts that go ~6 months without answer could be easily done, no?
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nerdbert · l33t Joined: 09 Feb 2003 Posts: 981 Location: Berlin

pilla · Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2004 11:06 pm Post subject:

masseya · Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2004 10:51 pm Post subject:

I think the dupes forum is a great resource. I would highly recommend searching for solutions like this:

Search the forum that you think the problem would fall into using various keywords and keyword combinations.
Search *all* the forums using those same keywords and combinations.
Search only the dupes forum using generalized versions of the keywords.

If everyone did this, fewer dupes would get posted and more problems solved faster.
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nerdbert · l33t Joined: 09 Feb 2003 Posts: 981 Location: Berlin

Decibels · Veteran Joined: 16 Aug 2002 Posts: 1551 Location: U.S.A.

We keep dups so we can tell who keeps posting them and not using the search function.
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mlsfit138 · Guru Joined: 20 Sep 2003 Posts: 406 Location: Washington

I have a little problem with the "dups" system. Many of the old threads such as the official p2p thread: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=5571 aren't used much because they are too large, unfortunately these large threads get very outdated. No one wants to hunt through 20 pages of outdated posts looking for an answer to their problem when it will probably be useless anyway.

Several of the threads that were similar to the official p2p thread became very active after they were first started, and then they were blocked. The official p2p thread remains dormant and outdated however.

Maybe a new system for retiring large outdated threads can be implemented. I really think they prevent some users from finding the answers they need.
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nevynxxx · Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2004 1:23 pm Post subject:

I would also have thought that new information could get into a dup thread before it is duped. So you would be deleting things which could help someone, the main point of these forums afterall. Just because the question is a dup, does not mean the whole thread contains nothing of interest.
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tomk · Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2004 2:55 pm Post subject:

Just had an idea, but it requires more work from the admins. How about using an idea from bugzilla, when a large/informative thread is marked as a dupe there should be a link to that thread in the original thread. Something like: This post <link here> is marked as a duplicate of this thread. Obviously it would only be needed if the duplicate has any extra info the original doesn't.

Just a thought.
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knefas · l33t Joined: 21 Dec 2003 Posts: 828

mlsfit138 · Guru Joined: 20 Sep 2003 Posts: 406 Location: Washington

I think that this would be helpful, but it would still require the user to look through the 20+ pages of the thread (yes I know you can skip to the end), and I honestly think that this deters some people from finding what they need.
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pjp · Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2004 8:52 pm Post subject:

tomk · Posted: Sat Mar 27, 2004 5:01 am Post subject:

mlsfit138 · Guru Joined: 20 Sep 2003 Posts: 406 Location: Washington

I think that the older threads sometimes stop being of any benefit to the forum users. I think that some of those older threads should be retired, and new threads be allowed to start up.
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