When threads get moved to a different forum now, there is a link in the original forum that goes to the thread, but with an indication that it is “located” in the new forum.
First, does this pointer go away after a while, or is it permanent?
And then, if it’s permanent, what’s the point of keeping that link if the intention was to…well, move the thread out of the forum? Is this just how the new code works?
As far as I know the “pointer” is as permanent as any other thread–I haven’t bothered to go back and look–but, because it can’t be posted to, it will more or less gradually (and in some forums, pretty quickly) fall off the front page and sink into the obscurity of the archives.
Its purpose is the same as the old manually created “moved threads threads”–it allows the thread to continue in the appropriate place, while telling the people who were participating in the moved thread in its original forum where it went. It’s quasi-temporary, in that if you don’t happen to check back on that forum page within a certain period of time, you may have some difficulty in finding the pointer to the thread–but that just encourages people to start threads in the right place to begin with, no? 
Works for me! Thanks!
I think (and Arnold or Gaudere can correct me if I’m wrong) that it can be wired out by a tweak of the interface programming that’s within the scope of vBB management, but it does seem to serve a useful purpose.
When you move a thread to a different forum, you have the option of
a) moving it with a “redirect” left in the original forum
b) moving it without leaving a “redirect” in the original forum
c) making a copy in another forum.
Option a) is the one the SDMB staff has found the most useful, so we use that one the vast majority of the time.
One of the things that drove people CRAZY about the switch from UBB to VBulletin 1.1 (or whatever version it was), way back when, was the way that VBulletin wouldn’t let the mod leave a copy of a moved thread in the forum where it was originally posted. Instead they had to have those “Where your thread went” threads, which drifted up and down the first two pages of the Forum.
So, you’d go back to, say, GQ, to visit your thread, and it would be totally gone, vanished, vamoosed, am-scrayed, and you’d be, like, “Hey, where’d my thread go?” And you’d fire off a nasty e-mail to the mod, with predictable results. “Hey, Einstein, didja check the ‘where your thread went’ thread in the Forum?” “um, no…”
I like this way much better. 
Hey! Why was Gaudere’s name in bold, but not mine? :mad:
You’re bold enough, Arnold!