Is it possible to change the color of the ui in some way so as to alert us if a thread has ever been a zombie (e.g.there was a gap of x amount of time between two consecutive posts)?
With the recent sanctioned increase in zombie threads, it might be very helpful to know while reading that a thread is a zombie, many including myself don’t always notice on some interesting topic.
I’m pretty sure the exact same question was asked before with the exact same suggestion, and people pretty much agreed that if you can’t notice a date on a post you won’t notice the color change either.
To the best of my knowledge, vBulletin doesn’t have that capability, and we prefer to keep out installation light on hacks so it makes upgrades and maintenance easier.
It would be possible to create a browser plugin or Greasemonkey script that would do this, but you’d have to sweet-talk a programmer into coding it for you. I don’t know if Wierdaaron is still maintaining his SDMB script, but he might be interested in the idea.
Please note that although at least one of the staff (me) uses Wierdaaron’s script, the SDMB takes absolutely no responsibility for it and doesn’t support it in any way.
If they did, they came to an erroneous conclusion. A color change is more easily noticible than tiny numbers enshrined on a page. I think it would be quite easy to prove.
What I remember the consensus being was that it wasn’t possible with the software.
Which did you notice more quickly?
Since I have font sizes larger than normal due to my settings, it was easy for me to see a slight difference in color. When I turned off my special settings and let the webpage decide on the font size, it was far less noticeable. Red would have been a better choice. My laptop monitor from 4 feet away doesn’t make apparent blue vs black in small type.
However, I can see posting dates quite fine as well, so I guess that makes me different as well.
Wait, you watch your laptop monitor from 4 feet away? How long are your arms?
BigT has a solid point. Some people (many?) skip “framework” and jump to “content”. “Framework” is different for different people, but to me, I don’t start by looking at post dates on threads or posts. Why? Because if the topic sounds interesting, then I want to read the content of the posts, even if it is an old thread.
But even with that, it is mildly jarring to read a statement, start framing a response, then read a post that says exactly what I’m thinking, and discover it was posted by me.
A color change in the text of the title (something you aren’t likely to skip) is more visible than seeing a date when you normally don’t look at dates.
I know, your response is, “If you’re so bothered by zombies, then you should start looking at the date.”
Hey, I agree, I’m just saying that a color change in content you read is more visible than text in a field you don’t read.
Not that I’m advocating any changes to the board.
Serious? An app as mature as VBulletin does not have a way to change the default colors for each item?
What do you mean by “each item”? You mean what you say in your OP, comparing all the consecutive posts in a thread, finding the max date difference between two posts in the thread, and then changing the text colour for the title of that thread in a forum display list?
I could see changing the default text colour for all the thread titles on a forum display page, but the highly specific change you describe would be a lot of work, and I personally would be amazed if any bulletin board software offered it as a “standard” feature.
Perhaps, but it seems like a small piece of javascript to me as the thread is served, or even a small piece of code that checks the dates once they are queried from the db, and then assigns a single css class at a high level, and then say, replaces the class that has the title bars equal to blue with green or something. It is just one line of css on the client side in that case, no javascript needed.
And the criteria for zombie could be simpler than comparing each date - i posted in the wee hours. But maybe the check could be as simple as "thread started > x months ago), combined with the css class I just noticed.
This would be very easy to implement on the server side, if the developer is listening at all to what improvements customers and users might be interested in.
All right, if you move the goalposts and say “threads where the OP is older than X days should get a different colour”, it seems like that would be easy enough, but then, from the forum home page default view, you can figure that out easily without having the text being a different colour, so I don’t know if a lot of people would request the option.
P.S. What I meant is that you can easily see which threads have an older OP date by changing the sort order to “thread start time” on the forum home page.
I rarely go through the forum home pages to get to a thread. More often I find it on New Posts. And it seems a lot of zombies are getting revised from google searches and new members form what I have heard.
Regardless, I would say wherever a zombie thread is listed on the site, it should have some indication it is thus.I am open to discussing what a definition of a zombie thread would be.
I read far more than I write. My wireless mouse is all I need to read, and the keyboard can stay 4 feet (or more, sometimes I read while standing up) away.
Y’all know I’m going to post in this thread a year from now, right?
Keep messing around and you will have us all seeing red!
I still say kill the zombies, and yes I get sick of doing a response and then finding it’s something I responded to 2 years ago. I usually find this out because I have a nagging feeling the question had been given in the past. I also have changed what my favorite was or response will be to a situation in the past. It’s called personal change and people will likely assume my current response would be the same it was 2 years ago. Kill the zombies without remorse.
I say lock them. 99% of the other boards do so, so obviously the “problems” never come up*. But I know my “vote” is meaningless.
*and most people posting to them are “new people” used to seeing other boards lock them, so they assume if it is not locked it is OK to post
We’re currently seeing what happens if we don’t kill zombies. Whichever policy we end up with, some people are going to be unhappy about it – we got regular requests that we not reflexively close them when that was the policy.
That said, we are closing certain kinds of threads, including those reopened by spammers, those with an acrimonious argument (esp. if some or most of the people involved no longer post here), and those that are just straight opinion threads, for the very reason you suggest. Feel free to flag any of these if you see it and think it should be closed. That doesn’t guarantee that it will be, but it does guarantee that a mod will take a look at it and evaluate the situation.
twickster, moderator
I actually prefer Zombie threads. The alternative is creating an entirely new thread about a subject that’s been discussed repeatedly.
For example, at least once a year or two someone will post asking about the meaning of the American Pie or Ode to Billie Joe song lyrics. I much rather continue a conversation from 2009 then create a new thread over and over again. Reinventing the wheel six times doesn’t make sense.
YMMV
Seems to me the vast majority of zombie threads are resurrected by newly joined members, and it’s almost always to make some pointless remark. My vote goes to giving them the True Death.