Zombie Thread Apocalypse

Allan · 2010-08-04 05:34:39

anonymous_user wrote:

BTW can moderators split out posts from a topic and make a new thread with it?

Nope.

ngoonee · 2010-08-04 06:32:28

anonymous_user wrote:

BTW can moderators split out posts from a topic and make a new thread with it? Depending on what a person posts when necrobumping, it may be useful to just split their post into a new thread.
For example when a person posts about having a similar problem, I think you should just split out the post.

Too much work for too little gain. Encourages laziness from forum members. If the person really wants an answer let him start his own thread, who's to say such a person would even know that the thread has been split?

sand_man · 2010-08-04 07:14:21

ngoonee wrote:

anonymous_user wrote:
BTW can moderators split out posts from a topic and make a new thread with it? Depending on what a person posts when necrobumping, it may be useful to just split their post into a new thread.
For example when a person posts about having a similar problem, I think you should just split out the post.
Too much work for too little gain. Encourages laziness from forum members. If the person really wants an answer let him start his own thread, who's to say such a person would even know that the thread has been split?

True. And once the thread is closed they have no choice but to start another anyway. Less work for mods and it encourages users to do the right thing.

.:B:. · 2010-08-04 09:21:50

With the new FluxBB, we can yes. Before we couldn't.

But I agree with ngoonee on the laziness point.

Allan · 2010-08-04 09:40:44

Woo! We can too.

I withdraw my answer of "nope".

ngoonee · 2010-08-04 10:45:24

Allan wrote:

Woo! We can too.

I withdraw my answer of "nope".

Hahahaha I just saw it as well . Now that's cool!

*goes off to wreck havoc in the off-topic subforum*

karol · 2010-08-04 14:07:11

ngoonee wrote:

Allan wrote:
Woo! We can too.

I withdraw my answer of "nope".

Hahahaha I just saw it as well . Now that's cool!
*goes off to wreck havoc in the off-topic subforum*

That feature is a true Apocalypse Suggestion :-)

Acecero · 2010-08-05 09:09:40

karol wrote:

ngoonee wrote:
Allan wrote:
Woo! We can too.

I withdraw my answer of "nope".

Hahahaha I just saw it as well . Now that's cool!
*goes off to wreck havoc in the off-topic subforum*
That feature is a true Apocalypse Suggestion :-)

What about mods deleting every single thread in the bbs?

karol · 2010-08-05 09:14:41

Acecero wrote:

karol wrote:
ngoonee wrote:

Hahahaha I just saw it as well . Now that's cool!
*goes off to wreck havoc in the off-topic subforum*
That feature is a true Apocalypse Suggestion :-)
What about mods deleting every single thread in the bbs?

We'll move to Ubuntu. They have too many threads for the mods to delete.

apefish · 2010-08-17 01:24:10

ngoonee wrote:

@Elendig, the thing is, most necroposters don't realize they're necroposting, I'd say about half are accidental and another half are from new members of the forums who come across threads based on google.

This is a good point. I bet a big **WARNING: THIS THREAD IS OLD** (for some definition of old) when you try to reply to an inactive thread would cut a lot of it.

If that does't work, I think it is a good idea to do the locking after inactivity in certain sub-forums i.e. technical issues.

ngoonee · 2010-08-17 04:35:00

karol wrote:

Acecero wrote:
karol wrote:
That feature is a true Apocalypse Suggestion :-)
What about mods deleting every single thread in the bbs?
We'll move to Ubuntu. They have too many threads for the mods to delete.

Nothing can survive the rm -rf

One of the factors to consider is that if its not supplied by fluxbb, it probably will not be implemented.

litemotiv · 2010-08-17 08:42:39

ngoonee wrote:

One of the factors to consider is that if its not supplied by fluxbb, it probably will not be implemented.

I hope that if it saves the mods a few hours each week, the admins would consider spending a few minutes on each upgrade to integrate a custom necrobump-solution.

Acecero · 2010-08-17 09:14:11

litemotiv wrote:

ngoonee wrote:
One of the factors to consider is that if its not supplied by fluxbb, it probably will not be implemented.
I hope that if it saves the mods a few hours each week, the admins would consider spending a few minutes on each upgrade to integrate a custom necrobump-solution.

What would the custom necrobump-solution do? Automatic banning on any member who necrobumps?

litemotiv · 2010-08-17 09:36:09

Acecero wrote:

What would the custom necrobump-solution do? Automatic banning on any member who necrobumps?

Hmm no, i wrote a script earlier that warns the user when posting in any thread over 6 months old.

But as said, in the end it's the admins' call, so if they don't see it feasible we'll work with the tools we have available.

Acecero · 2010-08-17 09:50:56

litemotiv wrote:

Acecero wrote:
What would the custom necrobump-solution do? Automatic banning on any member who necrobumps?
Hmm no, i wrote a script earlier that warns the user when posting in any thread over 6 months old.
But as said, in the end it's the admins' call, so if they don't see it feasible we'll work with the tools we have available.

That script should be very reasonable.

If users have enough caution to know what they are doing, that would save mod hours.

Does the script warn before the user completely submits the post or after submitting?

karol · 2010-08-17 09:57:09

Acecero wrote:

litemotiv wrote:
Acecero wrote:
What would the custom necrobump-solution do? Automatic banning on any member who necrobumps?
Hmm no, i wrote a script earlier that warns the user when posting in any thread over 6 months old.
But as said, in the end it's the admins' call, so if they don't see it feasible we'll work with the tools we have available.
That script should be very reasonable.
If users have enough caution to know what they are doing, that would save mod hours.
Does the script warn before the user completely submits the post or after submitting?

By "6 months old" you mean the last message in this thread was posted 6 months ago or the thread was started 6 months ago? The latter could be a PITA.

cesura · 2010-08-17 14:40:45

karol wrote:

Acecero wrote:
litemotiv wrote:
Hmm no, i wrote a script earlier that warns the user when posting in any thread over 6 months old.
But as said, in the end it's the admins' call, so if they don't see it feasible we'll work with the tools we have available.
That script should be very reasonable.
If users have enough caution to know what they are doing, that would save mod hours.
Does the script warn before the user completely submits the post or after submitting?
By "6 months old" you mean the last message in this thread was posted 6 months ago or the thread was started 6 months ago? The latter could be a PITA.

The last post of course (unless there is no posts in that thread, in which case it would be when the thread was started ).

litemotiv · 2010-08-17 18:04:12

karol wrote:

By "6 months old" you mean the last message in this thread was posted 6 months ago or the thread was started 6 months ago? The latter could be a PITA.

I'll post it here for reference, or in case anyone has improvements for it:

if (document.querySelectorAll)
{
    function isNecroBump()
    {
        var today = new Date();
        
        /* Quickpost */
        if (document.getElementById('quickpost'))
        {
            var postDates = document.querySelectorAll('h2 a');
            var lastPostDate = postDates[postDates.length - 1].innerHTML; 
        }
        /* Regular post */
        else
        {
            var postDates = document.querySelectorAll('dd span');
            var lastPostDate = postDates[0].innerHTML;
        }
        
        lastPostDate = lastPostDate.replace(/-/g, '/')
        lastPostDate = new Date(lastPostDate);
        
        if ( (today - lastPostDate) > 1000*60*60*24*180 ) // 180 days
            return true;        
    }
    
    if (isNecroBump())
    {    
        var myForms = document.forms;

        for (var i = 0; i < myForms.length; ++i)
        {
            /* If this is a post form */
            if (myForms[i].action.indexOf('post.php') != -1)
            {
                myForms[i].submit.onclick = function()
                {
                    if (!confirm('The thread you are replying to is more than 180 days old. If you are not absolutely sure that you need to post here, please open a new thread and link to this one instead. Proceed?'))
                        return false;
                }
            }
        }
    }
    
}

It's kind of hacky, since it is a client-side solution it needs to parse the date from the page. A PHP script that outputs a bit of Javascript would be more efficient, but i wanted to avoid any patches to the core/code.

Inxsible · 2010-08-17 18:17:09

the only problem with javascript is that it can be disabled at the client side, and that would bring us back to nought !

litemotiv · 2010-08-17 18:32:29

Inxsible wrote:

the only problem with javascript is that it can be disabled at the client side, and that would bring us back to nought !

That's not really a problem, since it is only meant to discourage necrobumping, not to prevent it altogether. If we can reduce the amount of necros with 50% that would already be a big win. Also, the people that purposely disable javascript are generally not in our target group.

Last edited by litemotiv (2010-08-17 18:40:28)

Ramses de Norre · 2010-08-17 18:44:08

litemotiv wrote:

Inxsible wrote:
the only problem with javascript is that it can be disabled at the client side, and that would bring us back to nought !
That's not really a problem, since it is only meant to discourage necrobumping, not to prevent it altogether. If we can reduce the amount of necros with 50% that would already be a big win. Also, the people that purposely disable javascript are generally not in our target group.

I'm not sure about that last point, I do block javascript by default (not on the bbs though) and it has happened to me that I didn't note the date of the last post before replying, mostly on threads that came up in search results.

litemotiv · 2010-08-17 18:54:50

Ramses de Norre wrote:

I'm not sure about that last point, I do block javascript by default (not on the bbs though) and it has happened to me that I didn't note the date of the last post before replying, mostly on threads that came up in search results.

The only real alternative is a PHP approach, but that means that FluxBB needs to be patched on every upgrade and the forums admins are not keen on doing that.

Inxsible · 2010-08-17 19:00:18

litemotiv wrote:

.......... but that means that FluxBB needs to be patched on every upgrade and the forums admins are not keen on doing that.

Understandably. But we can keep bugging the FluxBB developers to give us that feature by default

Acecero · 2010-08-17 19:17:30

Time to send patches upstream?

litemotiv · 2010-08-17 19:20:38

Inxsible wrote:

Understandably. But we can keep bugging the FluxBB developers to give us that feature by default

Yes, but i think it's highly unlikely that they will provide this -- anytime soon at least. Since auto-closing each topic is not an option, that would only give us a textual warning next to the submit button, the same thing we can integrate ourselves but reaching maybe 5% less people if we take the javascript route.

I'm all for FluxBB integrating this functionality themselves though, if at all possible..

Acecero: an official patch would definitely be much more work, it would also require admin settings to enable/disable it, set the timeouts and localize the message(s).

Last edited by litemotiv (2010-08-17 19:24:26)

Arch Linux

#26 2010-08-04 05:34:39

Re: Zombie Thread Apocalypse

#27 2010-08-04 06:32:28

Re: Zombie Thread Apocalypse

#28 2010-08-04 07:14:21

Re: Zombie Thread Apocalypse

#29 2010-08-04 09:21:50

Re: Zombie Thread Apocalypse

#30 2010-08-04 09:40:44

Re: Zombie Thread Apocalypse

#31 2010-08-04 10:45:24

Re: Zombie Thread Apocalypse

#32 2010-08-04 14:07:11

Re: Zombie Thread Apocalypse

#33 2010-08-05 09:09:40

Re: Zombie Thread Apocalypse

#34 2010-08-05 09:14:41

Re: Zombie Thread Apocalypse

#35 2010-08-17 01:24:10

Re: Zombie Thread Apocalypse

#36 2010-08-17 04:35:00

Re: Zombie Thread Apocalypse

#37 2010-08-17 08:42:39

Re: Zombie Thread Apocalypse

#38 2010-08-17 09:14:11

Re: Zombie Thread Apocalypse

#39 2010-08-17 09:36:09

Re: Zombie Thread Apocalypse

#40 2010-08-17 09:50:56

Re: Zombie Thread Apocalypse

#41 2010-08-17 09:57:09

Re: Zombie Thread Apocalypse

#42 2010-08-17 14:40:45

Re: Zombie Thread Apocalypse

#43 2010-08-17 18:04:12

Re: Zombie Thread Apocalypse

#44 2010-08-17 18:17:09

Re: Zombie Thread Apocalypse

#45 2010-08-17 18:32:29

Re: Zombie Thread Apocalypse

#46 2010-08-17 18:44:08

Re: Zombie Thread Apocalypse

#47 2010-08-17 18:54:50

Re: Zombie Thread Apocalypse

#48 2010-08-17 19:00:18

Re: Zombie Thread Apocalypse

#49 2010-08-17 19:17:30

Re: Zombie Thread Apocalypse

#50 2010-08-17 19:20:38

Re: Zombie Thread Apocalypse

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