recurrent issues
 

APG wrote in Football:

Why not? If it's something that keeps coming up -- and there are many FAQs with no good, or at least settled, As -- isn't it better to let someone more easily follow what's been said about it over the years than it is to start a new thread on it and therefore make it that much harder for people to look up? I've seen this elsewhere too, and find it frustrating that things can't be condensed into fewer threads.

I briefly caught the thread. My question is, were you providing new information related to the old thread? Is the rule you posted new?

Me? I wasn't providing anything new to that thread. I was just looking at the last post and thinking the opposite of what that poster thought, then realized it could apply generally to this Web board, and in fact to a great many others. Closing old threads is counterproductive compared to people being able to read through all the old before adding new. If they don't do that, not so good because of the redundancy, but no better if they open a new thread for the same thing.

Because it is annoying, that is why. I am on another site that keeps threads open and it is really annoying when someone brings back up a topic that is really old. It does not advance the discussions and often people say little about those past discussions. Also this is an officiating forum, not a fan site. Start another thread for God's sake. Heck you could even reference the old discussion. But quoting what people said 5 years ago when things change is silly.

Peace

Why is it more annoying to bring back up a topic in an old thread than it does to bring the same subject up under a new heading?

Does it really matter why? You're free to disagree, but this is the consensus. That's doubly the case when the posts that revive a two-year old thread aren't offering any new information such as rule changes or even proposals for rule changes.

Even then, as Rut indicated, the preferred method here is to start a new thread with (perhaps) a link to the old one.

Now, with that, I'm moving this to the forum to which it belongs: "feedback."

I didn't even know there was one until now!

I guess it's just a general philosophic difference between lumpers & splitters. It's like when I posted a thread response that was applicable partly to American & Canadian football and partly to Rugby Union, and someone in charge took it on himself to move it to whichever he thought its greatest application was. I like to connect things, other people like to disconnect them.

For the 1 time that "lumping" is good (new information has come to light that helps resolve some old dispute), there are 99 times that it's bad (someone has just joined the forum and takes it upon himself to go back and answer every thread in the past 2 years, and the answer that the newbie gives in post #35 is the same as the correct answers given in posts #3, #14, #17 and #23. Then, someone reads the answer, doesn't realize it's an old thread and starts asking all the "what if" questions that were already asked).

How is that worse than the newbie starting a new thread on the subject, not only not having read the previous material, but not even knowing it was there?