What happened in the other neighborhood

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Our policy for posts to old threads here at ETO is not clearly defined either, but it generally goes something like this:

If the post is on-topic and directly answering the original post (or another comment in the thread), then we (the moderators) simply type a response to the new post pointing out that the thread is X years old. No disciplinary action is taken, just a friendly reminder that the participants may not even be active anymore. Many times the OP doesn't realize they are posting to an old thread (they probably click through the old post warning without really reading it) and only had good intentions. No harm done, and their post is left alone as it could help future readers of the thread.

If the post is on-topic but is more of an "I have this problem too" or "I have a similar problem" question, rather than a response, then we consider it a hijack. We simply move the post to its own thread, link back to the original, and write in the new thread saying that it was split off from <link to old thread>. We let the poster know that what they did was considered "hijacking" and is generally discouraged. Usually it only takes one of these reminders, and the poster doesn't do it again.

If the post is entirely off-topic but is still electronics related, we pretty much do the same thing as above. We move it to its own thread and notify the poster of our "no hijacking policy".

If the post is entirely off-topic and not electronics related, we will probably move it to the Members Lounge and and notify the poster (of the move, and the no-hijacking policy), unless it's spam.

If it's spam, only then is it deleted.

I feel like it works well here. Very rarely do we receive complaints about threads being moved. In fact, I don't think I've ever heard a complaint regarding the move of a post....

Regards,
Matt
 
Little Ghostman said:
... so as more noobs like me come along it will get busy answering noob questions .
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LG as a "noob" ... now that's funny .
Little Ghostman said:
... The current problem is there is more people with answers than there are people with questions ...
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Ain't that the truth.

The new owner(s) added the "Latest Articles & Circuits" listing. Truthfully, it's the only part of the home page I check anymore. It's easier to use, to be sure. But one of its downsides is that there's only 11, double-spaced posts at a time (who came up with that number?). And there's no "More" option button. The thing is, pretty rapidly a thread can disappear off the bottom and, at least for me, it sort of gets lost.

On the old home page you were forced to look into a particular genre and then select your thread of choice, of which there are 20 entries - more opportunities before having to go to the next page. Think of it better traffic control in that it slowed down the gleaning process, thus giving OPs and contributor alike more "face" time without additional page turning. "Latest Articles & Circuits" is just a time controlled mashup without the additional qualifier that identifies the genre. Just the OP's sometimes less than enlightening thread title.

To me, the current system lessens the contributors' potential options and with fewer new questions it can lead to contributor "pile-ups". That, in turn, quickly adds to a thread and makes following it more difficult since successive posts can get overlooked.
 

I have a bit of a problem with this concept of hijacking. It appears that you take the position that the thread belongs to the OP. Often times the OP makes a post, 10 people respond and we never hear from the OP again. At that point, I think the thread belongs to the community. Especially after a week or two with no information from the OP. If someone else come along an says, "can you clarify x, y and z mentioned above?" Then it is a continuation of the topic, not a hijacking. Because to me, that request for clarification is no more offensive than when one of the 10 initial posts one of the Regulars asks another Regular, "are you sure that is right?", or "could you give us some details on that?". Why does time and experience of the poster make an on-topic question a hi-jack?

In the converse, how do you allow someone looking for a transistor cross-reference to hi-jack his own thread and go on for 800 posts while he works his way through to ask how to design and build an audio amplifier. To me, that is more hijacking than the case above. https://www.electro-tech-online.com/threads/transistor-equivalent.146091/

My opinion, Threads that go on more than two weeks AND more than 50 posts should be reviewed for on-topic consistency. I am not suggesting deleted, locked, warned, etc. - just monitored by an occasional quality/consistency review to make sure it is not time to split into two topics or clarify the title or some other helpful management.

Just my two cents. I am interested to hear the opinion of others. I just have trouble defining a hijacking by who posts and when - I think hijacking should be viewed by content/topic consistency instead.
 
Those are some interesting points gophert, and I respect your opinions. I can certainly understand your point of view. Let's see if I can clear this up a bit:


I agree with this 100%. If the OP vanishes, then the thread does belong to the community. However, if the OP comes back to the thread then they re-take part of the ownership (though it still belongs to the community). The OP might still have more say, for example, if they want to change the topic slightly and continue the discussion in a new thread. Their wishes would be respected in that case.


If the poster to the old thread is asking for direct clarification, then it is not a hijack as it is directly responding to the original post and responses. My example of "I have this problem too" or "I have a similar problem" is considered a hijack though, because this poster is asking directly about their own project, rather than the OP's. If you see it in person, it's easy to tell the difference.

Why does time and experience of the poster make an on-topic question a hi-jack?
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It doesn't. What makes it a hijack is if someone takes over someone else's thread asking questions about their own project. The age of the original post has nothing to do with the determination of whether or not it is a hijack.


I haven't been participating in that thread, but this is how I see it:

The OP never left the forum, and the thread saw responses consistently. Therefore I (personally) consider the thread as still "owned" by the OP and the newer questions have "evolved" from his earlier ones. This could explain the subject being overlooked. That being said, I haven't read through the whole thread so I'm not sure if he's switched projects or not. However, he does seem to agree that he should have started a new thread.

This one slipped under the radar due to the fact that it was the OP who pulled the questions towards other topics. I'd be interested to know what the other moderators think of this sort of situation. I know Inquisitive participated in the thread in question, I'd like to hear his side.


That's a perfectly fair suggestion. Since the moderators don't always have the time to watch every thread, the aforementioned "monitoring" may end up in the membership's hands. I will personally, however, be more conscious of this and will try to take an active role looking into longer threads to ensure they are still on-topic. If you feel a thread has been overlooked, please feel free to send one of the moderators a PM and we'd be happy to look into it. It's what we're here for

Just my two cents. I am interested to hear the opinion of others. I just have trouble defining a hijacking by who posts and when - I think hijacking should be viewed by content/topic consistency instead.
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Once again, I don't think hijacking is defined based on when the reply is posted. It's defined based on the subject of the post. Who posts to the thread is important in the sense that if it is the OP, and the "new subject" has to do with the same project for which their original post was created, it is not really off-topic because it's still for their project. If someone else posts to the thread with a "new subject", then it isn't part of the OP's original project, so it will probably be moved to its own thread.

This is entirely my own opinion, and this post does not necessarily reflect the opinions of any other moderators. I would like to hear their own views on the subject as well.

I hope this clears some things up.

Regards,
Matt
 
I think the problem is in the actual reason for the forums existence. There are two main types/reason's for a forum and unfortunately they conflict in how you need to run them, the problem is compounded even more by not knowing who,why or how the reader got to the forum.

The Types

1.
COMMERCIAL
The commercial forum is like ETO and ACC, they are actually marketing tools for people to make money from modern marketing techniques, I posted a very long reply in the other place on how this is done. Many people still think the money is made by click through adds, This is simply not the case now and dont be offended if you think clicking on an add is how the money is made! This was how it was done originally by something called pay per click.

PPC still exists and is often used in conjunction with the more subtle and modern techniques. Where the real money comes from is what is called product exposure, this is why you have facebook etal connected to your forum. While you may get X amount of people view a post on the forum, it is a TINY fraction of the number who will see it on facebook. This is why most modern adds dont look like adds, they are often small well written pieces on a product or service, and ever more commonly just a small constant nudge to keep a company 'in profile'.

The way a forum is valued (what it can charge for exposure) is dictated by the amount of traffic and NEW content. We tend to look at forum views etc to see how much traffic is around, but the forum traffic is actually of little consequence to exposure value. What really matters is a steady supply of NEW content that can be placed on social media, especially facebook and twitter. Think of it this way, there could be many many reasons people follow a company or page of FB and Twit, not all (hardly any) are actually reasons connected with electronic interest. A bizarre number of tweets and people who twitter are followed by there competition. So anyway what does this have to do with a forum etc?

Simple really, every time you have new content that is suitable to tweet or post on facebook it is then relayed via those outlets to millions of people, link together a number of resources connected with the same data types (look at ETO owners and how many electronic related forums etc they have), the more you can charge for exposure.

Now this causes a problem for many hobbyist and the people who actually make the content (posts), we tend to like all the information in one place, so a thread on X will give us all the information we seek, we are not interested in which company sells a product contain x chip, we want to know how to use it etc. We cant be bothered to search a forum and read 100 posts each containing a snippet of info, but for a profit forum this is a must or the fresh content dries up. So generally a commercial forum requires new posts constantly, even if it's its the same old questions.


2.
HOBBY FORUMS

These are what forums were originally, they were a place where people with a shared interest could share information. in this set up its better to have longer threads with the definitive information in one place, or better still spread over a few threads, that way regulars post 'see Y thread at this link'.
Mods will normally try and debunk ALL this by saying the owners never told them to kill necro posts, they are missing the point! DOH its the chicken and egg! The marketing guys developed the new system of marketing after the rapid decline in the effectiveness of click through s, as more people use add defeaters in browsers they needed a way to carry on marketing but had to make it more subtle.

So the new system was really just clever people watching how things were done and developing a system to fit. You can see this for yourself over at AAC, the mods are absolutely rigorous in necro posting and yet NO ONE can tell you where it came from , thats because we tend to follow others and keep to the tradition of a place, so as new mods join they normally follow what the other mods have done, hell we are all trainee mods! Anyone of us longer time posters KNOW what the lines are here, we all KNOW the culture.
So it dosnt take much for a concept to get ingrained and people to follow it like mosses [insert your own religious figure here] wrote the rule himself. Go look at for fun forums and see how many actually get annoyed with people posting stuff all over the place! Then compare with a commercial forum, a good commercial forum will be hard to spot .
The days of in your face adds has gone, look at the older forums with a fake add every other post
(you know the forum I mean ), go look at its value as a domain name, then compare with places like AAC. They are worth nearly $90K for the domain name alone, now tell me its not about money!
 

It was brought to my attention by a member that the thread was off the original topic. I did not read the entire post but started a new thread based on that observation.
 
gophert said:
ronv
Thanks for checking in but, there is no need for any decisions made there to address my concerns. Do what makes the current team happy, or leave it the way it is.
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Okay. Anyway I tried. Sorry you fell that way, but I understand, I feel the same about this site.
And here I was trying to bundle up JoeyD and Wendy to trade to get you back.

But for what it's worth, I think they have come up with a pretty good way to do it.
Time will tell.
 
ronv said:
And here I was trying to bundle up JoeyD and Wendy to trade to get you back.
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Not a bad deal if you think about it, kind of 3 for 1 , OK at the moment more like 2.5 for 1 but hey lets round it up . Be warned you get WINDY here and I smash the computer!!

I flit sites now and then because of people like Ron, shame he isnt a MOD here. I am not saying there is anything wrong with the Mods but I always thought the likes of Mike and Ron.......Actually when you think about it there is many members here that would make good Mods. AG (as long as you dont mention a certain op Amp), Jim(as long as you dont use Ham to describe a certain hobby), Mike (so laid back he is rumored to be Horizontal).

The you have me and a certain other person with tech in his name, we could bring a certain kind of............anarchy to what would otherwise be a overly sensible team .
 
Little Ghostman said:
Not a bad deal if you think about it, kind of 3 for 1 , OK at the moment more like 2.5 for 1 but hey lets round it up . Be warned you get WINDY here and I smash the computer!!
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Tee, Hee!
So you better be good!
cowboybob
I don't know if you know it, but the blue pages are still an option.
I'm with you. The orange makes my head hurt, but I think the home page might be the difference in traffic between the 2 sites.
When you Google in they are way different.
 

Out of curiosity, did they make a change?
 
Site traffic for a commercial site is only a small part of it, the greater priority is content for social media as this is where the big numbers matter. It's hard to get your head around but the W3 marketing techniques are way different from how it was done a short time ago.
 
Necro-posting and Hijacking.
How these are dealt with here on ETO is basically down to the judgement of the moderator who finds it.
Sometimes no action is required, sometimes one of several methods which have already been described are used.
To define a set of rules and an algorithm to deal with all eventualities sounds like an exercise in futility.

Things which annoy me as a simple member of the forum:

The One Post Wonders who appear, post a question, I or someone else put in some effort to give an answer, and then OP is never seen again and probably never even saw the replies.

Posts on multiple Forums, where the exact same question is asked here on ETO, on AAC, on ???
My view is why should I bother replying?
If someone came into your lab/workshop and asked a question, and while you were replying the got out their mobile phone and called someone else for the answer.
Wouldn't that grip your bits?

Newbies asking the same questions.
Unfortunately that is what newbies do. They are each on their own voyage of discovery, each finding out the same old problems which the experienced guys saw and overcame years ago.

Just my random rambling thoughts.
JimB
 
Hi Folks

Very interesting thread this. I have calmed down a lot with Political type threads....
I am still Political but searching hard to solve those problems by rather interacting with and finding solutions at grass roots level with what I have to work with and it has been joy all the way

My trainee Tech is flying like you will not believe. I am so proud of all he has accomplished in the last few Months. Nothing better than a student who is prepared to both listen and learn. That to me is worth Gold. My time has not been wasted training him.

A BIG thank you to the Moderators here for keeping the Life thread open. It started badly and ended well.

Sensible Moderation is what Forums need to keep them alive and active. So happy to say that ETO has sensible Moderation in abundance.

So proud of you Guys .

All the best,
tv
 
Yea, that and reading thru 100 posts and then finding "I have the same problem."
For some reason I never look at the dates.
 
I can fully understand why newbies do what they do, I personally dont have a problem with that as we dont have to answer, I appreciate as a mod you have slightly greater compulsion to answer. While its a unpaid job, its still a job and most wont to do it well. the other thing of course is, if a site dosnt give answers then the site dies and mods are blamed and not the membership.

I think what bugs me more is the long time noob who is given the answer in excruciating detail then does something totally different! For example....... There was once a member with mr in his name, he would ask a question and 10 people would supply very very detailed answers on how to solve the problem using method Y, in the next post from them would be I tried X and it didnt work! So the helpers would ask if he had tried the suggestions given?? No I didnt want to try those I wanted to try this and it didnt work, so again the helpers would go through Y solution and explain exactly why X wouldnt work. The next post would be I tried Z and it didnt work!! We would ask.........Did you try Y? No I tried Z and it didnt work!

On and On it would go, epic thread after epic thread, normally involving some kind of very simple pwm concept or whatever but requiring some of the most bizarre solutions because said member had purchased the wrong chip and refused point blank to buy any other. I think the classic thread for this was a candle where the chip had been randomly purchased in bulk, the solution required 4 timers and the chip had one (or something vaguely similar to this scenario), the simple solution would have been to spend another $20 and get a chip that would do the job, instead it took 6 months of ever more complex programming and still didnt work worth ****!

But the clincher surely was the said members attitude towards the person giving him the most help, lol those who know the thread will know exactly what I mean .
BTW what happened to jonsea? havnt seen him in ages, I wont ask about the other person in case I invoke a spell and he returns
 
ronv said:
It's not poaching. It's a 2 for 1 trade. What could go wrong?
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see a good salesman would have pointed out its a 2.5 (nearly 3) to 1 trade! But when you read the small print it says I will give you two 30 year old ladas and a non running 15 year old land rover for your shiny new Lamborghini!!

So kindly take your offer and go sit in the naughty corner!
 
JimB said:
Posts on multiple Forums, where the exact same question is asked here on ETO, on AAC, on ???
My view is why should I bother replying?
Click to expand...

I have never had a problem with this, and in fact I've done it myself on multiple occasions. Some topics are worth getting as many opinions/answers as possible. You can then cross-reference more easily and figure out exactly what you need. If getting as many answers as possible involves posting to multiple forums, then so be it.

If someone came into your lab/workshop and asked a question, and while you were replying the got out their mobile phone and called someone else for the answer.
Wouldn't that grip your bits?
Click to expand...

The difference there is that in your example it is an individual coming to another individual for help. It's much more personal that way, and yes--That might be offensive. However, when one posts to a forum it is with the understanding that it is a public question and it is for a community, rather than for an individual. It's much less personal that way.
 
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