Thread merging controls

[ghost]

Remember being able to merge threads? That was pretty useful when you have similar threads going on and things look like a mess. Videogames subforum has atleast 4 geometry dash threads and im sad about that.

[FlyingStefan]

It's not only the videogames subforum but pretty much every subforum needs it once or another time to merge two or more threads into one, for the visibility's sake.

While it may not be too much of a deal for anyone but the moderation team it would still be amazingly supportive for us to have this tool available in the new website (which we only can use, unless some black magic is used to access the old panel but that is sorta dangerous)

[Ephemeralis]

This is a major inadequacy with the new forum software for moderators and should be considered for escalation. Thread merging is an essential part of dealing with duplicate posting and keeping things organized w/o removing history or wasting user effort - not having it on the new forums makes them objectively worse.

[peppy]

Can you provide an example of where this is to be used, as opposed to outright deletion?

[Ephemeralis]

The example listed in the OP of fusing 4 duplicate threads together on the same topic is preferable in most cases to just outright deleting the threads - at the barest minimum, it's significantly less offputting for the authors of said threads, who are sometimes met with inexplicable deletion for attempting to contribute.

Live examples are as follows:

Geometry dash threads https://osu.ppy.sh/community/forums/topics/376329 https://osu.ppy.sh/community/forums/topics/590382 https://osu.ppy.sh/community/forums/topics/756013 https://osu.ppy.sh/community/forums/topics/540898 https://osu.ppy.sh/community/forums/topics/248764 https://osu.ppy.sh/community/forums/topics/870411

"Other rhythm games" conversations https://osu.ppy.sh/community/forums/topics/880970 https://osu.ppy.sh/community/forums/topics/409569 https://osu.ppy.sh/community/forums/topics/20858

We used this stuff super extensively in the past. So extensive that we used to inaugurate new GMT by teaching them how to merge with threads in AW. I have vivid memories of Sinistro showing me the page.

[nanaya]

Wouldn't it better to lock the topic and add link to the correct topic?

I've never seen it being used but what happens to the starting post? Will it be just become another reply post and thus look a bit out of place?

[FlyingStefan]

The idea is to reduce the amount of threads, since many threads mean that older goes down no matter how big or 'collected' they are. In that way it would be better to merge them, instead to lock and refer to the actual thread, because then they need to post the same content twice, and that doesn't make much sense.

There could be some kind of disclaimer that the posts were merged from a former thread (nothing too significant to show, just something to have)

[peppy]

The above examples would create huge confusion by merging. I'm all for locking & linking to main thread.

[FlyingStefan]

We'll have lots of dead threads with the same topic and content spread over the forums, and I'm not sure if that's less impractical than merging related posts in a single thread. People very often do not continue in the linked thread after locking theirs because they either feel insecure about reposting their content or feel helpless what they can do now.

As mentioned, an annotation or disclaimer could be added to these merged posts to refer to the old thread that is not bundled in the bigger (and mostly) more active one. From the experience I've made over the years I can say it'll help to dim the amount of duplicated threads and focus on the already bigger threads of said topic.

[peppy]

So lock and linking in both directions with a message (without any message movement), sounds good.