"There should be a time limit on posts"

Brendan Burgess

Brendan Burgess

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I got these email from a (former) user.

I have given up using the forum simply because every time I search for an answer I am directed to an old post of many years ago . Found myself reading posts without realising that it was posted 8 years ago and totally out of date ... it happens all the time .. very annoying . would have a time limit on any thread.

I used to delete old posts to keep the forum down to a manageable size. But the archive can be useful.

But he does have a point.

If I want to search for "CAT exemptions" , it would be better to get just the recent threads on the topic.

Brendan
 
Cannot say I've ever been misled by a thread that was many years old, I have a number of times been amazed to find threads from nearly two decades ago with good advice in them however!

I can see the arguments on both sides, but my vote would absolutely be to keep the older threads. Moderation is quite strong here, it's not like there are thousands of threads about cats clogging things up.
 
Old stuff doesn't become less useful, look at me!! Posts are dated, read the date. You could tie up scarce expertise trying to decide when is a post (or thread) archiveable or still current? Remember when you were allowed to post "did you try searching" or "let me help you with that"? What about this "He doesn't have a point - he just needs to search better. Put today's date one year ago in the Newer Than field on the search page - https://www.askaboutmoney.com/search/", I think it has merit.
 
This is common problem with forums and websites where content is dated. If you are new to the forum or content area and you see a post dated 2007, people don't bother to read them as they think it is no longer relevant to their "new" problem. Look at the stickys on any page, the vast majority are quite old but still very useful today and should be read.

One of the ways we are addressing this in work is to change the dates on the posts to show when they were last revised (Checked) rather than when they were created. It is definitely work for the website team but we do it on a a rolling basis so that each section is updated\refreshed on a schedule that doesn't overburden the website team. For instance Tax, Banking, credit Cards are updated in January, Credit Unions, Investments, Alternative investments are done in February etc.

For general searching, perhaps it is possibly to change the default value to be todays date - 5 years ago - and then insert an note that the date value can be changed...

The above are just nice to have's, I haven't noticed the problem myself.
 
Well I agree about the using search better.

But I have been caught out with replying to old threads but not really on this forum. This forum focus is often on general principles or issues that stay relevant for longer. So old posts are more useful than other forums.
 
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