The problem is searching might give you thread. It's finding the useful information form the hundreds of posts that forces people to just give up and post a new thread

The problem is not availability. it's accessibility. I know all the information is there in the forums and wiki. But it's cumbersome to find.

True. but we don't HAVE to have it all in Q/A. When it gets deeper. We can then go to Thread Links. or even better. Post Links. that answer the deeper questions of a give topic

No solution will be easy for a growing forum. There will be no magic here. If the problem is lack of many power. Then the admins can simply request more mods or contributers. I'm sure many wouldn't mind.. Sure some of the new mods will be problematic. but steps must be taken. Either we go drastic or just leave things be. There won't be an easy answer

Of course there is no solution that will fix the problem completely. But atleast now. The answer to a rogue thread would be to simply point it to the one of the super threads. Instead of answers that provoke threads to spiral. like (Ever heard of search?) or (If you don't know that by now, you shouldn't be here).

as i see it, the reason threads gets closed down because theyre are mass-duplicates.

there already is a ongoing thread about all these topics, but people want their own topic.

respect goes to you penguinbait for all you have contributed though!

...many people though come here and do nothing but complaining, starting new duplicate threads all the time

I think this is only an issue for a small minority of people. Most simply don't bother to search at all.

Well, to be honest, search could be improved a little.

The best way to improve search is put thought upfront into the content, tags and title of a post/thread.

Far too many posts here where those are afterthoughts.

Tags are useless, because they have no voting system and any one who thinks he's being smart abuses them. I see flame wars, jokes, hint of IQs, you name it.

Tags should be fixed.

i.e.

Fixed by birth:
* Device names (N900, N810, etc)
* Platform names (fremantle, diablo)
* Hardware components (battery, screen, gps)

Semi-mobile
* Every time someone tries a free-form tag, a tag is suggested.
* Free form tags don't show
* Free form tags get added up. Once they show in at least 10 threads, they are upped to a moderator for acceptance
* Moderator acceptance is conservative
* Once accepted, they become available.

Mobile
* Applications that exit devel get their own tag, upon promotion to testing (or extras)

This way, a thread could be tagged N900, battery, fMMS. That's useful.

I think it's a mistake to leave stuff as anonymous and free to all. We get children here, sometimes literally. No sharp objects please.

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Search is weird. I tried to search for "everyone left" and it thinks the keyword is "left". "battery life" (quoted) gets me <quote>battery, life<quote>. I think it works, though, could be cosmetic.

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Finally, we have -like- 50% thread hijacks here. Almost never is a thread ending with a solution unless it's really uninteresting. E.g., see the thread "Sick of all the closing threads". An eyeopener.

Ability to rename threads would be great. Delegate.

You need sub-mods.

I don't know how you do it. I visit the forums daily sometimes, and every day the "new threads" is overflowed at the 500 thread mark. I can't even keep up looking at them.

What you need is sub-mods, people you trust not to be idiotic and engage in childish behavior, and give them partial moderator access. Rename threads, maintain tags maybe edit and remove posts at request only.

That way some parts of the forum that are most active (N900) are patrolled, and threads could be cleaned up as "[Solved]", etc etc. Ideally, more bracket tags could be added, such as [Duplicate] [NeedInfo] [NeedExpert]. Or [Troll] (I wish).

I like the idea of OP editing thread title, but frankly, that assumed the OP comes back. And is not a doofus. And knows how. Sub-Mods can maintain this successfully, if given strict instructions. E.g., can only rename threads terminally hijacked, solved issues, duplicate threads. Dupes can then be reviewed and merged/deleted by a full mod.

It sounds viable to me. Little texrats all over the forum. The pitter-patter of little feet. It'll be like Bioshock around here.

That doesn't make tags useless, ndi. As long as the right tags are attached to the thread, it will be found.

We allow novelty tags, but at the same time try to make sure they don't go too far.

Reggie just recently enabled authors to change their thread titles.

I missed that fact but my experience moderating for the last few days makes a lot more sense now.

Seems to be a good move.

You are correct.

One last question, since we are now quite far from closing threads: Did you ever use tags to find anything? I mean successfully locate the info you wanted. This is not a trick question.

Finally, either tags are weird or search is broken? I thought tags brought up all threads tagged with a certain tag, but I clicked on maybe 50 of the 70 listed and they each bring up a single thread? This can't be right? Is it me? Even "n900" tag brings up one thread.

Also, some of those tags seem to be most recent searcher rather than all-time favs, some recent stuff that happens is pretty big. It can't possibly be that "can't connect to repositories" (one thread, 2 replies) is bigger than the smallest font?

Did tags get reset somehow? (though old joke PR1.2 thread tags still linger).

Should off-topic tags be in there?

And, good to hear changes still happen (@ renaming threads).

back to closing threads. A softer solution is to have a "barbecue yard" subforum where flaming threads are moved to. There flaming and ranting is allowed and moderation is more lax. Thus people have a place to rant at and those who are not interested in reading vents are not forced to read them.

In other moves to promote informative threads, threads in off-topic,competitors and the new "barbecue yard" should not not get promoted to "active topics" sidebar.