You are correct that you will get more results for a searched topic however, I personally disagree with your opinion that it’ll make searching for things harder. There are multiple ways to sort results to suit what you’re looking for. In addition, if someone is looking for a solution for something, I’d say it’s usually best to consult more recent topics. Older topics may contain potential solutions however, they can be erroneous or no longer applicable. Also, some of these threads have tens to hundreds of replies which can make searching for stuff harder.
I have often done exactly that many times in other contexts/forums.
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I think a community vote should be held as a final decision.
This way we can see how many people agree or disagree with this decision. Just go by the results of the vote, and if there need to be further changes made, another vote can be held.
Would you say this happens often enough to warrant a sweeping measure versus relying on moderators handling those cases individually? (In the case pictured either letting individual know this is not ok, or joining the four threads into one.)
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The vast majority of the threads we have to close are months- or years- old threads that get revived well after they’ve run their course, taking them off the rails into toxicity or otherwise.
Without closing old threads, the moderation load scales with exponentially to time, instead of by concurrent user count. The moderation team is a total of four volunteer moderators – we have to do what we can to keep the workload manageable.
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I note on the Fairphone forum the six months lock is standard but a user can ask for it to be unlocked which the mods do if they see reason with the request.
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Sadly they all have the same issue but clearly each OP didn’t find or didn’t search and so made a new topic.
Merging the topics would help but searching, although messier, with four titles does mean the issue may be discovered more easily.
So where goes any update if they all get closed ? is the answer to create yet another topic ??
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I’ll mention that A) thread locking is commonly found in other social media platforms and B) it’s multiple individuals. As we are a small team, with the continued growth of the forums, we need to keep workload manageable.
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Thank you
That’s the thing - if it’s commonly found, it doesn’t necessarily mean it makes sense for this forum. And there were questions pertaining to the motivation behind it so that normal posters can also understand the move. But all we got at first was a ChatGPT excerpt…
Thank you! This makes a lot of sense now
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I encounter the following problems with creating a new thread (though some people have tried to help with me these problems; my thanks to those people).
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The single-distro problem. The category ‘Framework Laptop 13 - Linux’ offers as tags the names of Linux distributions. The system makes one use at least two tags. Yet, most people using a single distribution. The same point holds for the category ‘Framework Laptop 16 - Linux’.
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The single-device / tag-reveal problem. The category ‘Community support’ offers tags each of which, I take it, is a device model. And again one must choose two tags. And again most people will have only one device. Yet, I discover the following. After and only after one has chosen a first tag is one offered a further range of tags, those tags comprising topics/problems such as ‘temperature’ and ‘not-booting’. This two-stage reveal confuses, partly because it does not occur with every category (!).
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The it’s-fine-until-it’s-not problem. If one changes category - i.e., if, having selected a category, one proceeds to select a different category - then any tags that one has chosen persist. The persistence proves futile and confusing, because, since tags are category-specific, they will get rejected once they are placed under a new category.
What is to be done? Re 1: allow a single tag. Re 2: make it clear, somehow, that the user is being made to choose one tag of one type and a second tag of another type. Re 3: I don’t know; perhaps the system should remove invalid tags immediately, or - better? - mark them as invalid by colouring them red, or something.
The Linux forum doesn’t want two tags for the distro, when you open the distro tag selection it shows “select 1 tag from …”
Ah. So here we have a case of problem 2? I am unsure that we do, for, having selected a distro as a tag, I see an instruction to add another tag and . . no way that I can add another tag. Screenshot:
Where am I supposed to click (within that which my image shows)? I find no place-to-click that lets me add a further tag.
in the text box where you write your “issue”?
Thanks. So: in the place shown in the following image?
That place - that box - offers no dropdown menu; seemingly one has to guess which tags there are. Or can one enter arbitrary text?
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Why do you have framework-laptop-16 tag in there if you are posting to Framework Laptop 13 - Linux section? That second tag box just wants the tag for your current linux distro (mint)
Remove that one and then click in the big text box and under the “Which Linux distro are you using” if you want to start writing the actual post.
You need to choose a distro tag for Linux subcategories.
For Community Support, you need to choose one device tag and one issue tag.
If that’s not the case, please let me know.
I understand that closing old threads may help moderation load and keep threads a little clearer and limited in their topic, but I fail to see the mechanism that would make the load grow exponentially with time. Is there some moment where threads start to get two replies per week for every post they receive? I have trouble imagining how that could be supported without an exponential growth of the user base. Do automatic bots take over at some point?
(perhaps there are specific triggers for this kind of thing. I imagine the improper use of the term “exponential” might be one)
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I just checked, and the FWL13 Linux subforum wants 2 tags for me as well. On the latest Firefox available for my distro. Are you on Chrome?
And of course, you are unable to select 2 tags once you are in the Linux subforum.
Whereas the Framework Laptop 16 Linux forum only requires 1 tag
And the Framework Laptop 13 forum also only requires 1 tag
So perhaps a FWL13 Linux subforum bug that is not present on Chrome?
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Nope, I configured the settings wrong, thanks for the heads up.
Framework Laptop 13 - Linux subcategory should only require 1 tag (distro tag) this is fixed now.
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Why do you have framework-laptop-16 tag in there if you are posting to Framework Laptop 13 - Linux section?
Because by that stage I was trying to find any tags that the system would accept.
That second tag box just wants the tag for your current linux distro (mint)
If I recall correctly, the box was insisting, so to speak, on two tags. EDIT: see Destroya’s post about a misconfiguration of the forum software.