Normally, I'd ask this on IRC, and I'm sure you've already considered it, but... Would it be possible, oh Mighty Jinxed and Calis, to get a script running on the forum which automatically locks thread after no new replies have been made in it for a certain period of time? This would, of course, short-circuit all the Oh-So-Funny gravediggers out there. Note that I said after no new replies have been made, not the age of the thread. Can you imagine the mrnobodie's never-ending joke thread being locked?
I also have a suggestion. Not all of the messages are necessarily essential to keep, wouldn't you agree? Perhaps some of the old General Discussion threads could be deleted to make more space? Not that I don't like seeing your various personalities change over time. Perhaps if they were archived instead? Also, I've noticed quite a few accounts which have not been used in ages or at all. Maybe some of these people are lurkers, but I think some must have just registered and then forgotten about the place. It's not my board, though. I've never been in charge of one, either.
It could probably be done. Just calibrate the prune option to lock, instead of delete. It would probably just be a simple change of a variable or two.
Pretty good idea, but what if a favorite post, like who needs a laugh, wasn't replied to for a while? Would it be deleted/locked?
I think a number of people on this forum are way too uptight - and missing the point - about gravedigging. I think the complaints shouldn't so much be about opening an old thread, they should be about opening an old thread *and adding something meaningless*. Now, that does happen a lot, but these people are just spamming and should be spanked down like the annoying kiddies they are, regardless of whether or not they're doing it in an old thread. Anyway, my suggestion would be to either change the rules or follow up on the suggestion posted by Jar and just lock threads that haven't had any replies for over, say, two weeks. Which is a little more involved than simply changing a variable or two in the pruning scripts (as the queries involved are radically different), but it could be done. Personally, I think y'all should get over it and treat gravediggers just like any other annoying inane spammer, but that's just me.
Well, the forum creator gravedigs a gravedig-shunning thread to post gravedigging isn't so bad.... I guess it's alright then, huh?
trouble is that a gravedig topic will be answered by one of us not to gravedig! so the no replies option wouldn't work there! I know its work but if one gets started, its flagged and blocked before it can get going. Parmanian PS we could have a forum topic just for gravediggers to talk in!
Why not? I could write a script that moves everything that didn't get any replies for the past x days to a separate forum. It's about as much work as changing the prune script so it locks threads instead of deleting them.
No, I mean the part about there being a forum where only gravediggers could post. PhpBB doesn't have those abilities, unless you use a mod of some kind.
Um... Yeah you can Xento, even without a phpBB mod. You make a Gravedigger group, put your GraveDiggers in there, and set that group up so that they only have access to one forum, or only have the ability to post in one GraveDigger forum, and there you go. As Calis said though, it's not that much of an issue around here, especially if the thread's only a few days or a week old. Even then, most of the threads are sitting on the first page of the forum. Hell, there's a news article in the news forum from October 2002. If someone wants to dig that up and post something meaningful, it's not so much an issue.
