Topic: Keeping old and new Topics alive (Read 500 times)

To me I can say it's not really about the topic been old or new, maybe it's because most of us don't really have replies to so many threads on this platform, someone might see a topic and may have no clue on what to reply, he/she will just skip and look for something simple to reply on or post.

I think it's not really about reversing old threads or something because I believe everyone have an access to any topic here and can make replies, except perhaps topics that are been locked by a moderator.

I only see it that members only reply to topics they have something to post about and leave the ones they have nothing to post about,
Even if you try to keep an old topic alive, a member that has no clue about the old topic will still keep mute, but reply the ones they could....

Keeping those topics active is my problem not searching for them, if I search for them and ignore them how can I keep them active? The thing is, we the users just like striking on new topics more than the old ones, nothing is bad if we make some research on those old topics and bring those crazy and interesting argument to live again. I know is hard but we could try.

Yeah, I agree with you. Every day, new trends or more interesting topics are created on the forum. It could be a problem, an update, or a solution to an already existing problem. Just like you mentioned. But sometimes newbies really don't know how to search through the forum, and while there is still a well-informed thread on how to search effectively, most of them have not come across those threads. What I can just suggest for newbies is to open a new thread and ask questions about what they are not aware of. At that point, they could get other old users to recommend those old helpful threads to them.



Cheers 🥂, Dr.Bitcoin_Strange 👺👺

In fact, I missed a lot of old topics of great value because it is difficult for me or most members to browse all the forum topics because they are too many.

Therefore, I find it good when an old topic floats to the surface for members who were not able to participate at the time the topic was created to see. When a member post on an old topic that floats to the surface, this is a good opportunity to revive the old topic for discussion again.

Although there are a lot of similar topics, sometimes there are old topics that are very valuable and it is good to revive them again.

New threads will always come with attention. Bitcoin is not a dormant niche, new problems, information and difficulties needs to get solved in the bitcoin community. This led to the existence of abandoned threads. Every forum under a trending niche, must have such threads. If the problem has been solved why waste more time on it. Bitcointalk members create a good number of threads everyday, and everyone's attention goes mostly to the new problems, questions or information. Most of the quality old threads still exist in the forum, if anybody want's to read about it, they can decide to look it up and study enough responses under the thread.

Your problem is not in making these topics active, but in how to search for them. If you learn how to search efficiently, we will find that most of the questions you asked have been answered, and if there is something new you can ask.

To search efficiently suggested topics for you.

[Guide] Searching effectively link https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/guide-searching-effectively-5276341 search using Modlog/Seclog and search button
[How-to] the Search button https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/how-to-the-search-button-2418352 learn how to use search button
https://ninjastic.space/search have many search option like Author, Topic ID, Post Title, and Board

By searching for these topics, you will find an answer to all your questions.

Very nice idea!
But how about using the search tool in the forum instead. Both forum's and google search will handle it.
Besides, information gets outdated and discussion in every thread at a point dies off naturally. Not a good idea to resurrect them.

To play the Devil's advocate, I would rather have the same topics posted from time to time.

Why? Because Google indexes the topics by their posted date so seeing a discussion from 2010 is outdated compared to one in 2023. And not everyone has the time to read from the top to bottom.

Using the search button before creating any thread is important to avoid repetition which could lead to spamming. If you also need any information about an issue, the search option will also be more helpful than creating a thread.

But it will not be wrong to derive inspiration from an old thread you think is important. Every day there are discoveries and improvements in the bitcoin community, it will be a just course to review some of them and make them current. You can add more information and upgrade outdated content making it conform to current realities. Indicating that you got the inspiration from the old thread and dropping the link is important to avoid plagiarism.

When you are informed that the topic you just created already exists, the best option is to lock the thread and refer to the old thread to get your answers.

First - it's not a rule, but just a warning that lets you think twice before posting or bumping the thread. If you feel the need to bump the thread - then by all means you can do it, but only if your content is still relevant or you add something genuinely useful to continue the discussion.

Some users ignore the warning because they really want to bring a dead horse to life due to the difficulty finding topics that are easier to reply to than others. In the end - the shitposters and spammers blow up - it happens a lot.

Some old topics doesn't need a bump at all and everyone can find it if they search for it. If you want to know different topics then you should visit the thread created for newbies that contains different topics and its link. It is called Beginners & Help Encyclopedia. When bumping an old topic, there's a warning and it woulf say it's much better to create new thread for it because some old topics are not useful as it was like the authenticator where what people use before is google authenticator but now there's another authenticator that people now recommend to use. As they have said, there's no point in keeping it alive when people are no longer interested to keep the discussion or there's nothing to add more to the topic.

That's not a big deal, is just to notify whosoever wants to bump a topic that have stayed for more than 120 days if he or she wants to continue, is not that you're breaking any of the rules guiding this platform or whatever the case seems to be. Is like the forum sees it as less importance to go on with it but is still left for you to continue or not, at first when I bumped a topic I thought it wasn't meant to be (after seeing that message) until I continued, that was when I discovered that it was ok not that I did something outside the Forum rules.

as an OP or not, sometimes you need to bump a topic that you think is important and must be maintained instead of seeing newbies who have just registered and give questions that are similar to the old topics that you think are important.


right, before bumping a topic, usually a warning like the one above will appear, and it's back to us, do you really have the intention to continue bumping on an old topic or see some members keep doing the same question (this is what I often see in the gambling section)

When those topics have 50 or more pages, so many of the posts become redundant and so many posts are not related to the main topics because it goes astray like the topic is about trading and it ends with topics about particular altcoins which has nothing to do with the trading topic.

If the topic will add value to all members mods can pin it, or if you want to use it as your own reference you can bookmark it or compile it and there's no topic that gets dust even topics that are a year or decade old are indexed by Google search and will always come up when queried.

There are situations when old and outdated topics can be bumped - but only if there is something sensible and important to add. Whereas if it is not that important or no longer relevant to the current situation and developments - then get one of yours.

This warning can be found when you want to reply to an old topic - so make your own judgment if you want to revive an old topic.

AFAIK not many persons have interest in making comments on a thread that is 10 pages above no matter how interesting or enlightening the thread discussion is, this is because they feel there's nothing more to talk about. And humanly speaking humans are too quick to let go of the old and embrace the new not just in the forum but in our everyday real life so am not surprised if good or interesting topics are forgotten after a period of time in the forum.

There are great topics that made sense yesteryears but doesn't anymore that's because they don't meet current situations and changes. If anyone happens to pick on a  good topic that looks outdated and has long been forgotten and he sees a need to exhume such topic by refurbishing up informations and resource that meets with current changes, am quite sure such ingenuity would be welcomed with fleets of modern discussions.

You cannot know everything or be good at everything, we all have our strong areas of performances and weak points as well, being a newbie, post when it's needed and read or continue learning if possible till you have something to offer, not a must to post when there's nothing to pass across.


There are pinned threads, there are bumped threads and some topics always receives daily discussion on them because they are always having one or more discussion to talk about on such thread, but when there's no need or matter arising on a particular thread, you don't have to bump it up.


why do you think we listen to news, it's just to get updates on the trending event happening in cryptocurrency and we can post them here to have proper discussion on them, they may appears as questions, answers, contributions, ideas and suggestions, research and discovery or trending news updates.

OP,  the answers you will receive would still point towards the same direction but however, old topics are not bad but to some certain extent, when the thread starts prolonging, the possibility of the topic being not relevant increases and it would definitely result to being Spam if someone revives it on the later. Just as upgrade00 has said I believe that would better explain itself properly.

There is no point reviving old topics or threads when there are new fresh topics of concerns to be attended to and it would be nice those old topics are allowed to rest it has always been.

I really understood what you meant, even if you did not explain yourself very well. When I was new, I think I have made such a suggestion. I understood that there are some helpful and rich information that are being buried in the old threads.
I actually proposed that there be a dedicated day for bumping  of old threads. But as I grow in the community I have a better understanding of the system.
There is a search button for anyone who needs such information from old threads. If old threads are all alive, you will discover that there are some information which were correct 5 years ago but no longer correct today. At a time the discussion in a particular thread is exhausted.

If you see in some sections like Meta , Beginners & Help, and many others, there are some pinned threads that are important, and they will always be on the top. There may be other threads that are important too but if no one post a reply on them, they will usually go down and with the amount of post and topics we have in bitcointalk, it is difficult to track them.

Keeping the topic bumping won't make it useful as there will be a lot of spamming etc. I guess most topics fulfill the purpose and if any newbie or any member requires the same information, they may open up a new topic and maybe they get updated knowledge on that topic.

What's stopping newbies from wandering around the forum and reading some old threads? Have you ever seen newcomers who were worried that there was an old topic that was in the shadows? No. It is easier for them to create a new one. And it's easier for everyone else to answer a new topic by writing almost the same thing that was written in the old topic.
There is no difference in this. The only thing that pleases is time, which changes some events and, accordingly, views. From this, we get more modern answers that are relevant now. But for the most part, the forum is full of topics with the same content, and everyone who comes here has a good opportunity to find out what people thought five years ago and now.

There's really no reason to artifically keep a discussion topic alive if there's no real interest in it anymore and it is perfectly normal for topics to die after some time.

It is one of ways if a topic author does not mind to Bump his thread. If a topic author see no reason to let his thread opens for discussion, locking it is good to avoid spam.

When you want bumping, there are two rules to remember about bumping.

No one cares, people can create a new thread which has been discussed a lot times and the moderators will not delete those thread. How to get merit, don't plagiarism guide, how to buy Bitcoin, what is signature campaign, guide for newbies etc can be found easily in Beginner & Help section.

If the moderators can accept that and the thread isn't get deleted, this mean there's nothing wrong to create a new thread even though it could lead to spam.

If there is an update to an old topic, then it is better to start a new thread, and link to the original in that imho.

I know quite alright that some post if continue talking about it, it causes spamming and is not healthy for the forum but won't it be better if the ones (post) you guys feel is not worthy to stay active to be removed without it affecting the post of the users or maybe deleting it or something, or probably pin it somewhere different and you call THRASH or JUNKYARD for safe keeping while the good post can be free to bump, and it will reduce those number of pages of posts growing down there. Can't it be done that way?

When duplicate topic is posted, there would be at least one member remarking that similar topic already exist and it'd be better to just post there despite this members keep creating new posts in this new topic and ignoring old one. I'm sure such topics are reported as well but are rarely deleted, dunno what's mod's take on that one.

Your intentions are right but think for a second that if we started to keep useful threads alive then we have to post a reply in it and once many member started to do that the number of pages will increase and thus the interest of newbies to learn something from that topic will decrease.

In short words, there will be more unnecessary content on those valuable threads which will hurt the value of real content. So the best way for newbies who came to this forum that if they want to learn something about merit system, trust system, or if they want to know about how they can download electric wallet, how they can configure it, or how they can avoid themselves from getting scammed in crypto sphere.

Then all they have to do is, put these keywords in search bar if btt forum and hit enter or they can write these keywords in Google Search Engine and at the end just type another keyword of Bitcointalk and the relevant topic will come. And the other way is to get information using Ninjastic tool, I hope newbies will also not aware of it and your intentions are to inform them about it by keeping the thread of ninjastic tool alive but alternative way is you can tell those are are searching for it.

Another drawback of keeping all those thread alive is the new threads will never be on first page which will lose the interest of old users whose quantity is more than newbies. It means, in providing the facilities to new ones we will lose the old ones.

We have sticky threads. All members will see sticky threads at top of each board and most of such threads are locked.

If you search before posting and search effectively, you will find those threads.

• [Guide] Searching effectively

Keeping such threads actively will cause something like super active threads in Gambling discussions, Mega spam threads. I am against this idea. It is good only if such threads are active with meaningful discussions, not just to be active.

I mean its normal that most of the topics are not active anymore, and the discussions are surely going to end at some point, It was still in the forum so if the topic becomes a trend again someone could easily bump it up at any time if they want to start a discussion or just wanted to reply to that post. I mean it's dynamic there are a lot of things that change technology keeps on improving so there are a lot of new topics that are going to be made. Also, there are topics that are just questions about some things, if the OP's question is already answered they can lock that thread already since the OP is already satisfied with the answer. There are topics that are going to be the same like for example topics about ordinals I remember there are a lot of threads that is related to ordinals

These old topics are not dumped or dusted into the cloud, This topic is still saved in the cloud and anyone could still reply and see this topic which is really useful for a lot of members, members could just read the discussions online, and this topics also appear on google searches so it's definitely useful which is the reason the goal of the forum.

When you are considering opening a new topic you should maybe use the search bar and see if that topic has been discussed already. If so, you have the option to go read that thread or the multiple threads on the subject. If the topic hasn't been posted in for a while and you have something that adds to the topic that has value, feel free to post and get the topic back to life. If you add nothing to the conversation and post anyways, you're necrobumping a topic and there is a possibility it gets reported and deleted. Multiple infractions could lead to a ban.

What ends up happening instead of what I said above is people do not want to search or they do not want to read a whole topic if they do search. So instead, they make a new topic and get their answers as well as are able to get more posts for their weekly quota by engaging with other users who have posted.

True, some threads are iconic and can be very helpful to beginners but we can’t pin them all. Newbies should learn to make proper use of the search engine so they do not breathe duplicate topics.

In my opinion, any thread that’s gone past fifth page will only have repeated comments from spammers and posters trying to complete weekly post quota, most times after the discussion has progressed to the 5th-7th pages, there is a high chance that the thread will be derailed with other conversations that has nothing to do with the original topic. You will find a lot of these mega threads in the gambling section, that’s why shit posters love to make their posts there.

The reason why they are not active is simple: some posts out there were made years ago for information purposes and guidelines, which were helpful to many, and tips from there are still being used to this day on this forum. But we can't just go back to such a topic to go and continue discussion over there, even if you want to. In a thread that consists of about 10–50 pages and you as a newbie happen to just come across such a post, how will you be able to read through such a huge page in order to check if a concern you could have raised has been discussed or not? And if you happen to wake up in such a thread, others say you are necroposting.
 
For me, when I see threads that are very informative and there is an area of concern, it will be helpful to quote a few words from there referencing the original author, and anyone who wants more information regarding that could possibly go there and read more.

I think for some of those topics, the discussion keeps going on and on until maybe there's nothing to discuss again. Sometimes, spammers spread spam in those threads, and the discussion could just die off, but if the OP feels the topic is very important,  he or she can bump the topic once in a while. In my opinion, to keep those topics from dying off, the best thing to do is bump the thread once in a while. At least the forum doesn't forbid bumping a post; what's forbidden is bumping more often.


Cheers 🥂, Dr.Bitcoin_Strange 👺👺

This is the main reason I avoid megathreads, even those that I've created myself and have developed over 10 to 20 pages of replies, even though I can still contribute to the topic, without repeating myself. After some point, only spammers reply to meet their quota for their signature campaign, repeating what has been said numerous times in the previous replies. Even if we suppose that there are a few decent posts among the 20-page-long thread, they're lost in the spam of other users and go unnoticed. The most annoying of all is quoting what has been said in the starting post and posting their completely irrelevant reply, with zero attempt to create a proper discussion and interaction with other users.

One way to keep a topic alive is to bump it from time to time. This is allowed on the forum, but you have to follow certain rules. You can bump only once in 24 hours and old bumps must be deleted regularly.

Unofficial list of (official) Bitcointalk.org rules, guidelines, FAQ

Have you not noticed that the more a thread is getting longer, the more spammers and low quality posters will begin to post there? There are many valuable topics that do not need much replies again as it get old unless some people will keep repeating what other people have posted there before. If I check some threads, I see some people already posting what is on first page with no added information to gain from the thread again.

Well this is very had to say why those topics aren't active anymore instead there are lots of new topics created on a regular basis while we have some of them or similar topics.
Well if I may say something here, most times people finds it interesting to discuss in a fresher topics than long created topics, sometimes it's seen as spamming after 5 to 8 pages and I believe any topic created and have such amount of pages people considers it to be much populated and the reason for creation has been met.

That was why most times the mods or admin kept deleting some of the replies and comments they found not valuable. I think the best is to pin them at the top as Upgrade00 already suggested but it should be a reason and meaningful ones to be pinned.

At some point the discussion on a topic is exhausted no matter how important or beneficial those topics are.

One way is the mods sticking them to the top, but there are too many good topics for then all to be stickied.
As an alternative you can bookmark any really good topic you find and bump them now and again so other users can benefit from it.

Bitcointalk has so many Topics that even some newbies don't know about even myself and those topics are very important. I've being wondering why some of these interesting topics are not always active like we forget about them that easy and it makes users who are not aware of it to even open a similar one and before you know it you start seeing links from nowhere that are related.

The thing is why can't we continue to keep those topics alive instead we over look them even when we have something to talk about, we prefer going for new topics.

How can we keep those topics alive instead of dumping them and allowing dust to cloud them?