Is there a way to encourage visitors to put questions in new topics than responding to old ones?

[way2roll]

As I visit the site, I see a lot of visitors posting semi-related, and often totally unrelated responses to threads that are very old. In rare cases it's related but more often it's a question that should be a new post. I am not being critical to these visitors; I love to see the new traffic. But I wonder if it would be helpful to implement a systemic message for users to alert them before they post, the age of the thread they are responding to and encourage these questions as new topics. It's not really a problem per se, with the exception of the visitor. I would think their questions would get more attention and more easily tracked for them to come back to rather than hunting for it in in an old thread. 

[StirCrazy]

the only real way to overcome it is to lock discussions in a thread after sdsay a year of activity, that should be a global setting (at least it was on forum boards 20 years ago).  then the info is still there for people to search and read but they can't comment on them any more, and have to start a new topic if there issue is slightly different.   

[MORSNOW]

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@StirCrazy wrote:

the only real way to overcome it is to lock discussions in a thread after sdsay a year of activity, that should be a global setting (at least it was on forum boards 20 years ago).  then the info is still there for people to search and read but they can't comment on them any more, and have to start a new topic if there issue is slightly different.   

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Great Idea!  It would also be good on the main page where we see each thread and the creation date, to also see the last post date so we know if there was a new reply since our last visit.  The bold font thing isn't working throughout the forum.  

[evanseegmiller]

Hey @way2roll, 

I think this is a great question and one we have been thinking about, too. It is a blessing and a curse at the same time. On one hand, this community is so rich with knowledge that we see over 200,000 page views each week simply because of the amount of content and information new users can find here. On the other hand, you are right that the users often don't read everything and don't see that the post they are reading is from 2007. In some situations, it might still be relevant information, but most of the time, the original poster hasn't been active since 2007. 

I think the best short-term solution might be encouraging those posters to start a new topic, as I have seen so many people do. If you have any ideas, please feel free to share or message me privately. I would love to hear them all! 

[MORSNOW]

The problem with newbies replying to really old threads lies in these new forums layout when they brought the threads over.  Nothing was in the old order by date, they just came over and old threads were at the top of the pages so unaware folks were answering question from the last post of a 10 year old thread.  Blame this new GS forum and the new folks overseeing it who didn't care.  The old moderators had no say in this operation. 

[evanseegmiller]

Hey @MORSNOW, 

Let me know if you see this someplace within the community, but everything is defaulted to "newest to oldest," meaning that the user shouldn't see posts from 2003 first on their timeline or on any page. They can always change their settings to see it that way, but it's not the default setting for a new user.

We can see most of these people commenting on older posts are because they have Googled a question and landed in the community because there is a very similar topic. They click into the community to read but don't see the date. They quickly make an account so they can reply, and that's how it gets pushed to the top of the Community Homepage because it was the most recent activity on a post within the community.  

Thanks,

[StirCrazy]

how do you explain this one in the 5th wheel group thismorning, I went through it not a post outside of 2014 and some how its at the top haha, most of the time it is because some one replied to a old topic but this one doesnt make sence.

[MORSNOW]

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@evanseegmiller wrote:

Hey @MORSNOW, 

Let me know if you see this someplace within the community, but everything is defaulted to "newest to oldest," meaning that the user shouldn't see posts from 2003 first on their timeline or on any page. They can always change their settings to see it that way, but it's not the default setting for a new user.

We can see most of these people commenting on older posts are because they have Googled a question and landed in the community because there is a very similar topic. They click into the community to read but don't see the date. They quickly make an account so they can reply, and that's how it gets pushed to the top of the Community Homepage because it was the most recent activity on a post within the community.  

Thanks,

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I didn't even think about the Google Search folks leaving those odd comments in old threads, thank you for opening my eyes.   I have trouble when reading these old threads and finding the new reply/post as many get inserted in the middle of the thread.  I wish there was a way to jump to the "First Unread Post" so I don't have to scroll through page after page after page of old comments looking for the newest posts.  Thank you evanseegmiller