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A way to stop people bumping old threads
I'm not sure if this is the right place to put this but I know in the survey there was talk of not being able to bump very old posts. Recently there's been a big influx of old posts (started 3 or 4 years ago) that are being commented on or are just being bumped up with no comment. Is there a way that after a certain date (maybe 4 or 6 months after the last comment was made) that no more replies can be added to them unless by the OP to update how they're getting on.
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Hi Blackkat - nice to see you! Your baby must be nearly due by now - how exciting! (Sorry, bet you're you fed up of people saying that to you!)
Thank you for your suggestion - and, yes, we feel your pain about old threads being bumped. It can be pretty annoying, can't it?
It may help to know a bit more about why this happens - because there are one or two different reasons.
First up, there's the spammers. They scour Google for threads on forums like our for mentions of something vaguely related to the product they want to spam about (sometimes not even that vaguely related, tbh) – and then just post a spammy link.
They couldn't care less how old the thread is (bet they don't even check) and they have no interest at all in joining the conversation.
These posts we'd like to delete as soon as they happen. So, if you ever see any, please do use the Report to Moderator link (there's one on every thread) to alert us to them - and we'll nuke 'em straightaway. I know you've reported spammers before, Blackkat, so thank you for that!
Secondly, there are people who find the BX Chat forum when they're Googling something they want to know about - usually a pregnancy or conception issue. Sometimes, the thread they come across is a really old one but, because they're new to forums or maybe because they're in a rush, they don't notice the old date and they post about their own situation. Sadly, because the original people on the thread have long gone, the new person rarely gets an answer.
It's more tricky with this bunch of people, as they DO generally want to join the conversation; they're just a bit late!
One of the ways we could get round this is by limiting threads to 1000 posts (it's often the very very long old threads that get bumped the most).
Or, as you suggest, we could 'lock' threads that have been inactive for a long while - or at least put a big warning on them, near the add message box, saying something like, 'This is a really old thread. Are you sure you want to post on it?'
We'll certainly have a think about doing one or more of these things. And please do shout if you can think of any other ideas that might help.
Out of interest, how many threads a day/week do you think you're seeing being bumped like this? It would be good to get an idea of how much you see it...
Hi thanks for your reply. No one really asked me with my last pregnancy but I think that it seems like I've been pregnant for so long that people are just too excited for me!!
I hadn't really noticed this much before but maybe because I've got too much time on my hands at the moment there seems to be a lot of them. Like 3 or 4 on each of the main threads. & yes, I do feel sorry for people who post on these threads as they won't get any responses but quite a few of them I've noticed over the last few days are blank replies with only the posters name & no message which is a little strange.
Ooh, sorry, we never talked about the blank posts, did we?
It's a bug: if you're trying to post from a phone and you're not logged in (shock at the very idea of EVER logging out of BX!), you can accidentally post a blank post.
It's blinking annoying actually - it's happened to me once or twice - because you lose the post you typed and you've sometimes no idea it's posted a blank post because when you log in successfully, you're taken to your Profile page, rather than staying on the thread you were on.
Anyway, we're glad to be able to tell you that we're working on a fix for this - which will mean you can't post - or even think you can post - if you're not logged in. Hopefully, we'll be able to release the fix in the next few weeks...
Have you had the baby yet?
(runs away)
Thanks for letting me know about that, I wondered how people left blank messages. I'm very old fashioned & (shock horror) don't have a smart phone so it's lost on me.
& no.... still pregnant!!!!