To end this debate once and for all:
Taken directly from Gary’s profile. Can’t show the full thing since it has IP address etc but any mod will confirm it. He is 100% not a moderator.
Also while I agree Zard’s comment is a bit elitist there is a grain of truth to it. From my experience the people who become moderators don’t really want to do it for the sake of being a mod, more to give something back to the game. I’ve modded for a few games in the past both forum and in-game and that rule has held out for something like 7 years ish now. So I stand by it.
Also the derail is real. I’ll leave this open since if you want to ask anything else RE forum rules then hey, might as well, but otherwise let’s just leave the mod discussions at that. You can always make a new thread if you wish to continue it.
@Buckingham I know it’s the standard rule on forums to “not necro old threads” but on the forum I moderate we actually encourage that stuff, as long as it’s the exact same topic being written about. There are various long-standing issues or discussion topics which are good to track over time how people’s perspectives change and stuff. However, if the older stuff is irrelevant then the new comments get split out into a new thread (by a mod) and the old one gets locked. It’s a different way of doing it but one that I like as an alternative system.
When I first joined this forum it seemed funny to see that basically any comment in a thread older than something like a month instantly got the thread locked because it was “necro-ing” lol. We all must conform though! It’s good to not have older things being brought up over and over.
That’s kinda what I was thinking @Killerdog . Inevitably someone is gonna post “when is the next moalith event” and someone is gonna comment “check old threads” but had they commented on an old thread someone would have said “don’t necro old threads”
Tbh locking necros is the lazy version of that. Yes there are probably cases where the thread remains relevant today but the nature of the game means they tend to become outdated very quickly, and it’s a lot easier to just lock the old ones rather than go back and edit them to keep them relevant every time someone brings them up again. Plus in the end result there’s not a huge difference between the revamped old thread and a new one.
Although the standard answer would be that I only enforce the rules, I don’t make them
Yup it does make it easier In my forum we also had the ridiculous rule of every thread that has gone 2 weeks without a post gets locked and moved into the “thread graveyard”. I extended this to 6 weeks and wouldn’t do it for topics which will come up again in the future or people will find very helpful. However, I gave up about 18 months ago because it was too much hassle getting around to locking and moving all old threads so now there are a few thousand (I think) threads I’d need to move lol. Taking an easier approach is definitely what I’d recommend!
In my forum we also had the ridiculous rule of every thread that has gone 2 weeks without a post gets locked and moved into the “thread graveyard”. I extended this to 6 weeks and wouldn’t do it for topics which will come up again in the future or people will find very helpful. However, I gave up about 18 months ago because it was too much hassle getting around to locking and moving all old threads so now there are a few thousand (I think) threads I’d need to move lol. Taking an easier approach is definitely what I’d recommend!