Frequently I have encountered threads in some of the other forums, the last post of which were placed by a moderator, who indicates he is moving the thread to a different forum. Nonetheless, the tread remains in it’s original location. Was there a time when the moderators were ineffective? Why don’t these threads move?
The mods do that from time to time… y’know, just to mess with your minds 
Nah, probably it’s just that you’ve caught them in between those few moments it takes to say “I’m moving this thread” and actually moving the thread. I reckon it takes a minute or two to load up the Special Mod Page and go through the steps to “play God” on the Boards.
When the SD is busy, moving a thread can indeed take a few minutes. That’s probably what you saw.
Nice theories, thanks for the response, but no.
These threads were often untouched in over a year… yet they were still in the old locations. I’d give you an example, but my browser just started acting up.
Hmmm… maybe another UBB to vB conversion glitch, then. Tubadiva? Any thoughts?
And of course, real examples would help. 
If the threads were untouched in over a year, that means they date from the pre-conversion era. On the old UBB board software, when a thread was moved, it would appear as a locked thread in the original forum and get copied into the new forum as an open thread.
In the UBB to vB conversion, threads that were locked got converted over as unlocked threads.
What I bet happened is that in the new vB system we have two threads for every thread that was moved, the ‘stub’ thread from the original forum (which would end with a moderator saying ‘I’m moving this’) and the ongoing thread in the new forum.
You haven’t given any examples, but the next time you run into this phenomenon, perhaps you can do a search in the forum the moderator said he or she was moving the thread to and see if the there is another thread there that continues on after the moderator action.
Or, maybe, that one night Coldfire got piss-drunk, he ran around the Boards unlocking all the closed threads.
Coldy, you silly goose. Whatever will we do with you?
Yes. Any threads that were locked (but not deleted entirely, and that wasn’t the usual procedure then anyway) before the conversion were converted unlocked.
Here is an example which wolfstu was responsible for resurrecting and this thread (and others like it) are probably the reason for that posters confusion: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=22232.
Of course, now that this was answered, maybe wolfstu would be kind enough to let us all know why (s)he was resurrecting year-old threads to begin with?
Yer pal,
Satan
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See my Sig File FAQ: http://pages.prodigy.net/briank.o/SigFAQ.htm
*
Here’s a thread that was moved out of CCC to the Pit, and discussion continued. This was under UBB, so a locked version of the thread remained in CCC. Some jackass decided to revive the thread in CCC when he realized that it had become unlocked. The thread was then closed, and the jackass was later banned.
Pit thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=9925
Comments thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=1946
Y’all figured it out.
You’ll work me out of a job at this rate. Fabulous!
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
At least one moderator, ‘manhattan’, has voiced concern over the number of new threads that are posted when old threads with the answers contained in them would suffice. So, I spent some time among the ancient threads, and found some of considerable merit, some of marginal merit, and some of very little merit. I responded to those that interested me, or that I thought might be helpful, or were interesting for some reason.
Thank you for solving my concern, all of you. This was most useful in my effort to gain an understanding of the boards and their intricacies.
Thank you again, wolfStu.
So one minute the thread exits one forum, three minutes later it appears in another.
Where has it been between times?
Is there some kind of thread-limbo (the border place between GD and the Pit where dwell those threads who, though not yet condemned to flaming, are deprived of the joy of eternal moderation by DavidB}
OK, you remember a few months ago, when occasionally absolutely nothing would work on the board for five minutes at a time? Those times always seem to have coincided with a thread being moved. In other words, you can’t really say what forum the thread was in during that time, because you can’t even say where the fora were.
Now you know why we really don’t like moving threads around, if we can help it.