Ugh. Expired Threads

[Evoir]

:sad:

Owch. I just stubbed my toe on an expired thread.

I can't say enough how much the expiring of threads effects my involvement in this community. I was taking the time to ask a follow up question to a thread and I didn't notice it was expired. I spent about 20 minutes getting everything all perfect, and I clicked the button, and :wah: all my carefully typed words went away. (I know, I should have noticed, but I did not -- I'm a pretty advanced Web surfer and I got bitten by this)

Now, back to my plea of not expiring threads; I know I can now post the question in a new thread, and link to the old one, but, I'd really like to continue the conversation in that thread. I probably will post my question, but starting a new thread is, well, more work. You have to set up the context and I definitely have to re-write a lot that was already written in the existing thread...

The across the board expiring of threads has made an impact on my involvement with this community. I usally come around here in spurts, every 3 or 4 months and dig up old issues and update them. Questions that I had, where now I have an answer...

Why can't FQ just expire the threads that were causing trouble?

So, now I am off to re compose my mod rewrite question... :blah:

Since it seems that you really are going to keep doing this, I have some UI suggestions for this:

1) Change the color of the expired threads button to make it stand out. Red comes to mind.
2) Make the link go nowhere. ie: remove the link on the button, so no-one looses the words they have typed. The expired threads button can simply not go anywhere.

[Jeff]

Also prefer this mod http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=96850 to the absolute lock mod.

[Snarpy]

I'm pretty sure you can just use your browser's back button to get your text back....testing now....

uh, wrong. Sorry.

[Evoir]

nope. I lost it all. :(

[Joseph]

I am confused. If a thread is expired, and you click on the "Expired" button - you should get an error message that says "This thread is expired." It shouldn't even let you see the make a post form... :dunno:

I created a Site Owner account, and tested this, and it would not let me see the Post Form, it just gave me the error message. The only thing I can think of is if you pressed "Post Reply" BEFORE it was expired, but didn't finish writing your post and press "Submit Reply" until AFTER it expired. :umm:

[Evoir]

Ok, I just checked again, and I used the post quick reply, and in fact on expired threads, if you have text there and post quick reply, you loose your text. I wasn't even thinking of that. That's a problem, too. So, that's how I missed it.

Well, that is confusing. That Post Quick Reply should be disabled on expired threads. (or, you could stop expiring threads across the board. :))

[Joseph]

That Post Quick Reply should be disabled on expired threads.

I agree. I have modified the plugin to add that check into the Quick Reply as well. You should no longer see a Quick Reply on expired threads. :yeah:

(or, you could stop expiring threads across the board. :))

This has been discussed many many times, and there are very good reasons for the expired threads. FutureQuest will not be disabling them in the near future. :smile:

[Evoir]

Cool, thanks Joseph.

[Randall]

Also prefer this mod http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=96850 to the absolute lock mod. That I would support whole-heartedly. No one's going to knowingly reopen a 3-year-old thread unless they have a good reason, or they're spamming the forums. You can always delete the spam.

And it sounds a lot simpler to implement than my "follow-up button (http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=139920#post139920)" idea. :yeah:

Randall