IMPORTANT: New ATS Policy on Repeating Topics in Threads

Originally posted by LadyV
I know you guys hate the suggestion, and this won't happen, but it would be so useful to have a sticky in all forums which contained the title and link to threads that are going to be repeated time after time...Pyramids, Titor, 2012, etc......just a though.

For the record there is a 2012 stickie. I was thinking about having a Titor stickie, but need look into that further.

im guilty as a new guy of posting a couple of repeat posts, forgive me i am new!?

as i said somewhere else, new people dont fully know how the boards work, may not have noticed the tiny little search button top of screen (like i didnt til today!) may not know about subscriptions and sure dont care yet about ats points so dont use that as an excuse for people starting new threads just for those, which are pretty useless at the end of the day...

and lets say now that im stressing over a problem or have a personal experience i wana share, i want 'as many people to see it as possible'...
i want them to see my question or title of thread.. which maybe difrent to what other people are calling it..

[like i got pulled up on sleep paralysis,, not knowing someones already posted it under a difrent heading, incubus, night terrors or wateva...]

lets say i do notice 1 of those threads.. but its way down the list and also im not a date watcher of posts etc... either

i may think to myself "shall i post in this guys thread? is it still being read? maybe its not... hows this work? oh man i cant be as*ed scanning minute details" etc... cause my brains blitzed with sh*t loads of info...

and if i do use that thread then nobody will see my title or question, watever,,, at the start on the board! ...

so il just put a new post! sleep paralysis anybody?

so my post is started.. goin fine until somebody whos seen it before says "HEY! wat are u doin this has been done before! u shud at least read or scan to see if its been done before!"

lets say i didnt even notice a thread on it.. cause its got a diffrent name..

rarely often do people give you the link, they just wana rant how NEW and stupid you are..

[fair enough! stupid just means unknowing.. we are all stupid]

but why the hell do u have to jump in and pull me on it? and MOAN, with a pompous attitude just cause u have been here longer and know more how it works?

doesnt it make mores sense to leave the topic alone for them to chat among themselves? is it so bad that u just cannot bare to browse past another repeat? are u so weak minded to crumble and u just have to have ur little rant?

well i guess it must be that bad... and trust me, im sorry! but if people are just goin to be rude then f*k them? the damage is already done, the post cant be deleted, only edited. or locked by mods... why hang around debating with the guy and spoiling his thread? what damage does it really cause you?

its about time this matter has been dealt with.. there surely cant be anything new left on this site to bring up! so most posts are old, and new people arnt likely to continue those posts because they want their own thread like the other person had...

im no writer, u will probably tear that to pieces but i hope theres a bit of sense in there somewhere.

You can't really expect members to keep up with all the posts in every forum. Depending on perspective, similar subject matter could be represented in many different ways. Sometimes I don't choose the most appropriate slot for my post. As a result, many have been exiled to remote outposts such as BTS. Here, posts are viewed less and get little feed back in comparison to the more popular forums. Is it OK to move a largely ignored post to a different forum to try and generate interest?

From the view of new members everything is new and fresh, and they may wish to discuss things we have all been through over and over, perhaps our minds are just closed to new ideas or fresh views on old topics.

We should always keep the door open here to anyone who wishes to join this community and contribute.

There has been many times when a new member posts a repeat topic and has had several members (not moderators) come down hard on them for doing so. I am sure they felt as though they had done something really wrong and can only imagine the frustration they must have felt.. I am sure it could be a major let down... In fact I wonder how many new members who had great potential were driven away from this community because of things like this.

We all have to be aware, we must welcome new members and their creative input... Not crush their potential!

Have we forgotten what being a new member here was like?

You never really know what may come to light through a new discussion of an old topic.. why crush it before it gets started?

It can be helpful to post links to older discussions, as a source of information.

I believe this is a great move by the administration of this site.

This new policy can only help ATS continue it's impressive growth.

Originally posted by UM_Gazz

You never really know what may come to light through a new discussion of an old topic.. why crush it before it gets started?

It can be helpful to post links to older discussions, as a source of information.

I believe this is a great move by the administration of this site.

This new policy can only help ATS continue it's impressive growth.

Agreed. ...It's the nature of learning too. Each student needs to begin at the beginning. ...Impatience-making for old hands, but each new fresh mind does bring a new perspective, and often, opens new doors for everyone.


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after what i just said myself i was kinda scared to come back and check this thread in case i got torched

just wana take the time here to say sorry to anybody ive offended along the line and that i effin love you people this sites awesome

The Policy Seems Reasonable To Me

The even-handedness of the staff is, in my opinion (IMO, IMHO, IM a HO?), one of the things that distinguishes ATS on an Internet with thousands of discussion forums.

Some boards I know of are very hard-edged about new posts covering old topics, which leads to ginormous and hard-to-follow threads that usually end up covering everything but the original topic.

The effect of such extreme policies tends to be stultification and eventual board death.

Meanwhile, on other boards with a totally wide-open policy, some topics are repeated so frequently that it becomes tedious to decide which ones to reply to, let alone actually follow some sort of continuity in the discussion. Often, replying to older, more pertinent posts is considered “gravedigging” on these forums

The effect of such lax policies tends to be a low signal-to-noise ratio and eventual board death.

Seems to me the ATS staff has once again found a happy medium between two undesirable extremes.

Nicely done.