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Give mods ability to split threads
Thread poster: Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 08:07
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
Apr 20, 2010

G'day everyone

I think moderators (and possibly other senior users) should have the ability to split a discussion thread in two.

This can be done if it is perceived that a user had posted to an old discussion when he should have posted a new one (if his qustion does not, for example, relate to the origial question at all, particularly if the original question was posted months ago or years ago), or if it appears that a user had posted an off-topic remark and all subsequ... See more
G'day everyone

I think moderators (and possibly other senior users) should have the ability to split a discussion thread in two.

This can be done if it is perceived that a user had posted to an old discussion when he should have posted a new one (if his qustion does not, for example, relate to the origial question at all, particularly if the original question was posted months ago or years ago), or if it appears that a user had posted an off-topic remark and all subsequent replies relate to that remark and not to the original discussion.

Other forum software has this function. A moderator can select any post to be the new "first post" and then the discussion is split in two. People can still respond to the first thread, but it helps keep things on-topic.

An example of where this feature might be useful is:
http://www.proz.com/forum/getting_established/143.html
Here Paul posted a question which is completely unrelated to the original discussion (except that both questions relate to web sites), so now people are responding to Paul's post in a thread that has nothing to do with their responses. This would make future archive searching even less fruitful because the later responses are not related to the earlier ones (at all). Also, sooner or later someone (like me) will come along and post an answer to the *first* post, which is unnecessary (and confusing to people currently following the thread) because the first poster is no longer following the thread, and any answer to the first post would be of no use to Paul, who posted the second question.

Obviously, splitting threads has to be done early enough to prevent replies to the first question from ending up in the second thread. So splitting threads must be done with care, and only some users must be able to do it. Still, if ordinary users can "call to topic" so that senior users can affect the split, it would be useful.

What do you think?

What would be useful in such a case is if the two resulting threads could have a message at the top saying "This discussion was recently split in two. The other discussion is "here " (hyperlink).". This would prevent people who bookmarked a thread from posting to the wrong one.

Samuel ▲ Collapse
 


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Give mods ability to split threads






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