Cleaning the Trading Forums.

Moderator Joined: 02 Aug 2003 Posts: 3040 Location: Paris

Hi Ralph and Mods :wink:
Will it be possible to clean the trading Forum,while there are 10 pages on the Promotional one,only 2 or 3 pages are maybe still active.Thanks.

Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 4:12 pm

I am very sorry, but this can not be done anytime soon. There is just one moderator at work at the moment, and he is still overwhelmed with the job to sort the old forum. I will try to take care of the situation, but patience is advised.

Moderator Joined: 02 Aug 2003 Posts: 3040 Location: Paris

Ralph Herold wrote:

I am very sorry, but this can not be done anytime soon. There is just one moderator at work at the moment, and he is still overwhelmed with the job to sort the old forum. I will try to take care of the situation, but patience is advised.

Hi Ralph.
Why don't you hired some more,if there's so much work to do ?

Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 7:59 pm

if you give me guidelines for what can and cannot be removed i will be more then happy to do so.

Member Joined: 04 Aug 2003 Posts: 593 Location: CT

If they have time, members could delete their own out of date threads from the trading area. The moderators don't necessarily know which threads are still active and which are not.

Moderator Joined: 02 Aug 2003 Posts: 3040 Location: Paris

l0qii wrote:

If they have time, members could delete their own out of date threads from the trading area. The moderators don't necessarily know which threads are still active and which are not.

Hi Tim.
By proceeding this way,that's why we have 7 pages or more of non active threads.Is there's a way to automatically delete thread 1 month old for example?Also,you can delete your own thread but not the answers from others.I believe also that a mod could know that a thread is obsolete,
when it's from January 2005(Almost a year) page 10 of the Promotional,and in page 3 of the Promotional it's posts from September(Almost 3 Monthes).It's the responsability of Members to update their posts,if not,it's mods job to delete them after a certain time(1 Month seems logical) and they don't have to worry if it's still active or not ,if the member doesn't care of his own post.

Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2005 9:40 am

dragsamou: Automated deletion is possible, but I do not advise it. In between obsolete trading threads, there are sometimes useful tidbits of information. They would become lost if an automated process was at work. Therefore, the threads have to be deleted by hand.

Moderator Joined: 02 Aug 2003 Posts: 3040 Location: Paris

Ralph Herold wrote:

dragsamou: Automated deletion is possible, but I do not advise it. In between obsolete trading threads, there are sometimes useful tidbits of information. They would become lost if an automated process was at work. Therefore, the threads have to be deleted by hand.

Hi Ralph.
I was talking about the Trading Forum only for Automated deletion,as it doesn't contains valuable infos beside Members Want/Have.

Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2005 10:42 am

dragsamou: In a perfect world, this was true. But in reality, where people misplace threads or lead threads off-topic, this is wishful thinking.

Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2005 10:50 am

Further some people edit there threads very often but leave them in the position where they are without Upping them.
if you where to do an automated thing a person who does not UP his thred on a regular basis (as he only has very difficult cards in it) would then get it deleted.

I think non-automated deletion is the best but I fully understand that the mods have WAY enough to do allready.

give another couple of mounth for the NEW/OLD change and then I guess they can handle it with no problem.

As Nico offered hisself as a Thred-Killer, could he not move topics he thinks are to be deleted in the "Scheduled for Deletion" folder, maybe writing the beginner of the thread a PM or email.
Everybody can look thorugh those, I do it pritty often, and say yes or no.

Moderator Joined: 02 Aug 2003 Posts: 3040 Location: Paris

Ralph Herold wrote:

dragsamou: In a perfect world, this was true. But in reality, where people misplace threads or lead threads off-topic, this is wishful thinking.

Ralph...Mods are supposed to take care of that.Well,it seems that everything is complicate,I just try to make things moove a bit,for the benefit of everybody,well next year,maybe....

Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2005 5:36 pm

The extra threads are, unfortunately, a necessary evil.

The prime requirement of a Moderator is to do no harm. So much information from MTG's and Wizard's past is held secretly or is already lost. One of the major goals of this site is to capture as much of this information as possible. As such, all forum communications become a sort of oral history. And while much of what is written is dated, or friendly banter among forum members, there are nuggets of information everywhere.

Removing the junk without removing the information is quite difficult. Our forum does not easily allow anyone (administrators, moderators, or members) to delete just parts of threads. It tends to be all or nothing. And you have to look at each thread's content from a number of different perspectives. As an example, trade and sale offers often include rarity or pricing information. Sometimes the data is trivial, but sometimes it is important. Sadly, all of these evaluations take time, as it usually takes at least a minute to fully evaluate and move even a single short thread to the scheduled for deletion area. It takes longer if you consider moving a thread elsewhere, as you need to confirm the proper destination and also determine whether the thread is redundant.

Member Joined: 04 Aug 2003 Posts: 593 Location: CT

dragsamou wrote:

Hi Tim.
By proceeding this way,that's why we have 7 pages or more of non active threads.Is there's a way to automatically delete thread 1 month old for example?...

I myself had a post from March that did not get a reply until October (7 months). And since then has had a few more responses, it is still active because I still need those cards. Auto-deleting just leads to people upping their posts to keep them active. Personally I wound find false activity more of an annoyance than obsolete posts laying around.

let me give the subject some thought. Maybe we can come up with some other solution.

Member Joined: 04 Aug 2003 Posts: 670 Location: Austin, TX

hammr7 wrote:

Our forum does not easily allow anyone (administrators, moderators, or members) to delete just parts of threads. It tends to be all or nothing.

Although I don't believe this is what you meant, individual posts can be deleted from threads quite easily - just go to the modcp when viewing a thread by clicking on the Moderate This Forum link at the bottom.

As far as deleting content from within posts... that'd be a bad idea on any forum, imho. You'd risk misrepresenting posts which had portions of their content deleted.