Can something be made about the 'I searched but..' syndrome...please?

Hi all,

Yet someone else just complaining here :-P

Recently, and by that i mean all 2011 and so, i've been seeing this more often, almost as if it was a requisite for all people who joined starting 2011.

1. Lots and lots of people are posting threads which always start with "I searched but...", and is always a thread that has been posted a thousand times, a video or something that is all over the place in the internet, what's the deal with that, if by quickly scanning the current threads i can find at least two or one of the same, i don't even need to use the search box, just look at the threads in the front page and there it is, waiting for you! but..

2. If someone posts a duplicated thread, these 'new' members are the first ones to post one of:
- There's already a thread about this, thanks for wasting my time!
- Well i searched and it worked for me, but i won't post the link to the other thread, look it up yourself
- Someone (who is not a mod, and hopefully will never be) says something like "This thread is a duplicate, you should post on the original thread, please post anything you want to say there, because i want it that way"
- Someone just goes and posts into the thread bitching about having more than one thread for the same subject.
- I hate everything and i want to make your life as bad as mine!

Is always as if they were just constantly scanning every forum waiting for a thread, remembering each and every thread's name in case someone posts a duplicate by chance, and just a few seconds or a minute or so after posting the duplicated thread they come out and post their "duplicated thread" notice, what's the deal?

So i just wanted to ask, is there something that can be done, like for people who post a "duplicated thread" notice without them being a mod, maybe a warning, take out points, remove post or something? just stop the madness please :-D


I think i said this before, not sure, but it would be nice if all duplicated threads could be merged into the first one, otherwise good posts may be lost because of being posted on a secondary thread that gets killed, what if we could have a "Report Duplicate" button, and once a mod gets to see the duplicated and the original thread, he or she can merge both threads? am i complaining about something insignificant here? is this thread a duplicate and will be deleted without mercy and no one will know about my suffering? ever?


And probably it would be nice if the search feature was improved, i have used it before and it didn't work too well, but i guess that's something not easy to do, anyway.

I'm out, I searched but.. could not find a thread about this , so here's mine

Kai

Originally posted by Kaifan
I'm out, I searched but.. could not find a thread about this , so here's mine

Kai

There is a thread on this already...

Thread Closed vs Merged
www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by Kaifan


i guess you should have used the search button.
scanning the first page doesn't always work.
stop being a search nazi!

1. Lots and lots of people are posting threads which always start with "I searched but...", and is always a thread that has been posted a thousand times, a video or something that is all over the place in the internet, what's the deal with that, if by quickly scanning the current threads i can find at least two or one of the same, i don't even need to use the search box, just look at the threads in the front page and there it is, waiting for you! but..

You not taking in consideration a lot of new members are just trying to fit in, they just signed up they are eager to share some stuff they might not be experts on this forum or they might know not much about computers and they aren't very computer literate give them a chance...

2. If someone posts a duplicated thread, these 'new' members are the first ones to post one of:
- There's already a thread about this, thanks for wasting my time!

Search functions use keywords to find what your looking for, now I could make 20 different thread using 20 different thread names however the search function will only found those that matches the characteristics of
the data you provided the search function.

- Someone (who is not a mod, and hopefully will never be) says something like "This thread is a duplicate, you should post on the original thread, please post anything you want to say there, because i want it that way"

Its called taking initiative my friend, if everybody just sits around complaining that there's a problem but nobody acts upon it you'll end up in a situation like the world we live in today.

- Someone just goes and posts into the thread bitching about having more than one thread for the same subject

Why the fuss over the others you've just done so yourself?

- I hate everything and i want to make your life as bad as mine!

Well this one dates back to the stone age buddy... You'll encounter that everywhere... especially in high school and so on...

Is always as if they were just constantly scanning every forum waiting for a thread, remembering each and every thread's name in case someone posts a duplicate by chance, and just a few seconds or a minute or so after posting the duplicated thread they come out and post their "duplicated thread" notice, what's the deal?

As I said earlier searching either on a forum or the internet is a skill that can be built... some people are just better than others. I remember in school I'd be given all kinds of stuff because I was going at finding things on the internet...

As an example if your searching for mayan stuff and you search "Mayan prophecy for December 21st" you won't find much... if you use keywords like "codex, pole shift, crystal skulls" as examples you'll find ALOT more quickly...

So i just wanted to ask, is there something that can be done, like for people who post a "duplicated thread" notice without them being a mod, maybe a warning, take out points, remove post or something? just stop the madness please :-D

If moderators has this function it could be modified for users, however the thing is that as I said before it'll use keywords just like any other and might flag 2 threads that match but miss 30 others due to the words used in the seach...

I think i said this before, not sure, but it would be nice if all duplicated threads could be merged into the first one, otherwise good posts may be lost because of being posted on a secondary thread that gets killed, what if we could have a "Report Duplicate" button, and once a mod gets to see the duplicated and the original thread, he or she can merge both threads? am i complaining about something insignificant here? is this thread a duplicate and will be deleted without mercy and no one will know about my suffering? ever?

I don't think that's a solution at all, lets say you two threads similar... On one side you have the OP that made awesome researches and posted sources and made good observation points and on the other hand you have the typical dude trying to troll.. Would it be fair for those two to get merged and the troller gets as much point/stars as the first one? And if his "trolling" ignite and kills the threads how could this be fair? Also merging two different perspective, opinions or divergent belief in the same conversation isn't a good thing at all. It can distort the original message of both OP even thought they speak of the same thing...

And probably it would be nice if the search feature was improved, i have used it before and it didn't work too well, but i guess that's something not easy to do, anyway.

As I said its not "intelligent" it only find keywords you can only make this good up to a certain level before you reach its peak potential...

Now no personal attack or anything but it seems to me your taking this personally and directly instead of try to reason yourself. There's only so much that can be done and I know this because I run all kinds of servers and I host boards and IRC servers.

You just seem to take this too personal for what it really is buddy, Its like your asking for everything to be changed so it stops annoying you... I mean I know it can be annoying but its the internet that how it is here and anywhere else buddy... Its a take it or leave it deal...

Depending if the Admins here have their own programmer that's proficient enough to rewrite the modules/core of the board some of this stuff could be done but I REALLY DON'T think its worth the about 2-3 months of intensive programming/debuging/testing and all... I mean this guy I'm pretty sure he has a life of is own too and he'd love to spend it with his wife and kids instead of a computer monitor...

I don't even bother with the ATS search deal.
It's never found what I was looking for in the entire time I've been here.
Since they improved it, it now crashes my browser whenever I try (most likely due to probllems on my end, but still...)

Your milage may vary.

Not that it bothers me, just sayin'.

1. ATS search is horrible
2. Is having more than one thread about something really so bad?

You bring up a very good point OP and a topic that I think has long been warranting a discussion.

As, far a search goes, I have had mixed results with it, sometimes it works well, sometimes it does not.

I have mixed feelings about the current rules on duplicate threads. Because, on one hand I understand that the mods are trying to keep from having the recent post page and even the first pages of any given forum from being flooded with similar threads, but on the other hand threads tend to sink faster then stones on ATS. They may last a few days or a week and then sink to the past page threads to be buried and never seen again. Mainly because the average user doesn't bother to dig through the pages of past threads anyway.

And lets say you do want to create a thread on a topic and you search and find another thread on the topic, but it's a really old one. If you necro that thread and the OP of it and some of the users that posted on it are no longer around, then you can't really discuss or ask questions about the comments and stuff already posted and the thread is effectively dead and probably deserves another.

I would also like to say, at least for me, mods closing a duplicate thread and linking to a much older one actually instead of making me go to the older thread, really just makes me move on. I can't even count the number of times that I have seen a thread on the recent post page that is going well and I get to the last page and see that a mod has closed it and added a link to a similar thread. Then when I go to the link I find a huge multi page thread that has been dead for weeks or months. At that point instead of reading 23+ pages of posts on the dead thread, I usually just drop it and move to the next topic and I doubt I am alone.

Really and it's just a suggestion, but I think the duplicate thread rule should have a length of time clause. Like no similar threads can be made in the same time period, but if you want to post a live thread on a subject and there are other threads like it but they are months or years old, then you should be able to. Because, really if the rule were in enforced to the utmost there would be no new threads on ATS other then breaking news, because every other idea and subject has a thread somewhere more then likely.

Just my opinion on the matter, though.

Originally posted by zorgon

Originally posted by Kaifan
I'm out, I searched but.. could not find a thread about this , so here's mine

Kai

There is a thread on this already...

Thread Closed vs Merged
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Yeah that was a joke.

Also, this thread is more about those people who are constantly reminding the OPs that their threads are duplicated, i found that annoying and from what i've seen i'm not the only one, that's what the mods are for, so people who just go and post their 'notice' without adding anything to the actual thread subjects are just wasting space and bothering everyone else.

reply to post by _R4t_

Why the fuss over the others you've just done so yourself?

I believe you are not understanding very well the points and the difference between opening a thread here to discuss this and going to a thread someone else posted and be the first reply which doesn't add anything but to complain about the thread being a duplicate and then goes and insults the OP in a discrete manner.


I think you should step back a bit and realize that i wasn't being serious in most of what i said.

Its called taking initiative my friend, if everybody just sits around complaining that there's a problem but nobody acts upon it you'll end up in a situation like the world we live in today.

Actually no, that's what they are doing, complaining, what good does it do to complain that there's already an existing thread, instead of say, adding a valuable comment to the new thread or simply ignoring it? What that's called is trying to put down someone else because of their mistake just so that they can feel good about other people being down. Happens a lot, sometimes disguised as a polite comment.

By those standards, i'm taking initiative and acting upon a problem by bringing up this issue with people who keep posting the same "There's already a thread about this dummy, you should search, stop wasting my time posting duplicates" stuff on all threads that dare to talk about the same subject.

But anyway, i didn't expect anything out of this, and i don't expect anything to change, or people to be more polite, or to actually have some manners and just simply don't say anything if they don't have anything to say but to attempt to put someone else down.

reply to post by _R4t_


Not really, i'm half joking on the OP, i don't actually expect anything out of it because i've seen in the past that usually nothing happens.

What I've seen is a lot of people just looking for a reason to put everyone else down, and the OP usually replies to the troll and the thread gets derailed, i think most people missed my true intent with this thread, but that's ok, it was not a serious attempt and not a serious problem, this is just a forum in the end.

Originally posted by Kaifan
reply to post by _R4t_

 

Not really, i'm half joking on the OP, i don't actually expect anything out of it because i've seen in the past that usually nothing happens.

What I've seen is a lot of people just looking for a reason to put everyone else down, and the OP usually replies to the troll and the thread gets derailed, i think most people missed my true intent with this thread, but that's ok, it was not a serious attempt and not a serious problem, this is just a forum in the end.

I get you brother... And we all need to vent once in awhile.

Just do what i do and post a link to the search page that you looked on
like this
ask.abovetopsecret.com...
put it in your thread and then when the police come around you have an alibi
Eta i just tried looking at the link and its blank,so much for that idea

reply to post by prisoneronashipoffools


You know, reading your reply, i believe not all people will be able to really understand what you meant, not because they are dumb, but actually because they tend to see things in a different reality.

So, i truly believe what you said is completely right, once a mod closes a thread because a very old one exists, no one will care anymore, no one will go out of their way to post on a thread where most of the original posters don't even have active accounts anymore, so, what would be the best way to go about that?

Beats me,

As a software engineer, i can say this, if an issue like this can't be handled in a reasonable time span, then the site is not designed correctly, because:

- Changing a number of posts so that those belong to a different thread, should just require a simple value change in a db field, but without knowing the actual architecture of the db, who knows!
- We don't need to move points or whatever, we just need to move posts from one thread to another, is the same, if the mods close a thread everything is lost, so what is holding them from running a stored procedure that changes the thread id to another one and in 'human terms', moves all the posts to another thread?

Like:
(B) thread contains all the post ids of whatever posts have been made on that thread
(B) Thread is closed
Stored Procedure is run that takes the (A) main thread id, looks for all the posts in (B) table and changes their owner thread id to (A), then goes to (A)'s table and adds the ids of the posts which used to belong to (B), once that's done, when someone else opens thread (A), all posts which used to belong to (B) now belong to (A) and show on the (A) thread.

Oh and even that is a bad example of db architecture, but it shows how simple it should be, unless something else is going on :-P

But i don't think it will happen, anyway.. lets move on.

Originally posted by JoshF
1. ATS search is horrible

Right on. I've searched for content that I know for a fact exists, sometimes just to prove it, and it fails to turn up quite frequently. I'll even go so far as to say that search turns up what I'm looking for the minority of the time but searching manually turns it up.

2. Is having more than one thread about something really so bad?

It's inevitable and it will happen more and more as threads accumulate over time.

reply to post by Kaifan


There is no point bringing up new and valid points of discussion in a 3 year old thread with 200 pages that nobody is going to read through.

That sounds like people trying to hide something.

New threads are what keep this website alive. How do you not see that.

I get bored of this site and stop coming here when it's the same old stuff and nothing new and just 30 100 page threads about stuff from 4 years ago.

New is good.

Originally posted by JoshF
1. ATS search is horrible
2. Is having more than one thread about something really so bad?

Just my 2 cents..

1. It ain't great, but it could be worse. I know that is kind of a cop-out. Here's what I mean - I can find what I look for sometimes - sometimes not. Sometimes when I can't its kind of due to the nature of what I search for. I have way better luck looking for specifics rather than general stuff. Like if I know a a name, place, etc to search for I get what I want usually. If I just know something like "alien crash" to search for I'll get a zillion threads back.

2. It depends. If there was a thread on it last year, last month or even last week that is basically dead its not a bad thing at all in my view to have another thread. Others views may differ. But, there are also times when I come to ATS and see 3 or more threads about the same thing under the "recent posts" section. That just makes it hard to keep track of if you want to participate and there really isn't a need for it IMO.

Originally posted by LucidDreamer85
reply to post by Kaifan

 

There is no point bringing up new and valid points of discussion in a 3 year old thread with 200 pages that nobody is going to read through.

That sounds like people trying to hide something.

New threads are what keep this website alive. How do you not see that.

I get bored of this site and stop coming here when it's the same old stuff and nothing new and just 30 100 page threads about stuff from 4 years ago.

New is good.

The issue is not with very old threads, but more like when you find a thread that was created 2 days ago, and then you find a new thread about the same subject that was created 15 minutes ago, since both threads are new, people starts complaining on the second thread about it being a duplicate, but anyway, if you read carefully i'm not that bothered about having more than one thread, but what bothers me the most is people going to the second thread just to post their 'duplicated thread' notice and then leave, they don't add anything to any of the threads they just spam with "this is a duplicate thread you dummy, use the search the next time" posts.

Originally posted by Frogs
2. It depends. If there was a thread on it last year, last month or even last week that is basically dead its not a bad thing at all in my view to have another thread. Others views may differ. But, there are also times when I come to ATS and see 3 or more threads about the same thing under the "recent posts" section. That just makes it hard to keep track of if you want to participate and there really isn't a need for it IMO.

Exactly, there's a difference between:

- Bringing back to life and old theory or subject, and..
- Having several people talk about the same thing at the same time.

Second one is more like everybody is yelling and no one knows who to listen to.