Off Topic Posts

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Re: Off Topic Posts

Postby twister » Fri Sep 09, 2016 7:33 am

OFF TOPIC: Recently two posts were made regarding Jared Fogle, but they were made to different threads in different forums. It's confusing when people post in an inconsistent manner. One post was in Technology and Gadgets and the other was in News and Issues. It seems like the info about Fogle fit better into the News and Issues forum to me.
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Re: Off Topic Posts

Postby surfsteve » Fri Sep 09, 2016 8:23 am

I wonder what kind of sandwich they would serve if you ordered a Fogel foot long.
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Re: Off Topic Posts

Postby cactuspete » Mon Sep 12, 2016 7:43 am

OFF TOPIC: There are a number of threads that should be cleaned up and wildrose and myself have been given administrative rights to tidy up a bit. We both agreed to keep things minimal, but in the interest of organization and making it easier for new members to follow topics with a minimum of hunting around we will be making small changes here and there. We plan to study the situation for a couple days however before proceeding.
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Re: Off Topic Posts

Postby surfsteve » Tue Sep 13, 2016 11:03 am

I've looked at the posts that were mentioned here and I think it would be far more confusing if they were moved over and piled into this thread and that it would be more of a form of censorship than one of clarification. You could make a new thread and move them there if you really wanted to but even that seems a bit of an over kill and may be less confusing to new users but at the expense of being more confusing and redundant to everyone else. I'd much rather see an imperfect place that people can get together and freely talk than someone's sterile pristine vision of forum utopia. If you really want to do something, fix the search so that nearly every other word doesn't come up as being too common and is eliminated. It's quite ridiculous to use google to search this forum and find something that the forum's own search engine was unable to find.
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Re: Off Topic Posts

Postby wildrose » Wed Sep 14, 2016 8:19 am

The search engine issue I have no clue about. My guess is that the software that runs the forum doesn't have nearly the resources available to Google, but that's just a guess. As for attempts at organizing errant threads, I agree that it should be done judiciously and that we shouldn't get carried away. However, I've noticed a few old threads buried pretty deep that are pertinent to ongoing discussions. For instance, there's one called Verbal Camouflage which is quite relevant to several threads, but no one sees it since it's on page three and there now exist several related topics which are more likely to be used.
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Re: Off Topic Posts

Postby surfsteve » Wed Sep 14, 2016 12:36 pm

If you want to fix the search engine issues, what you want to do is disable the common words feature by setting the value to zero and then delete and rebuild the search index. You need admin access to do this which I assume you already have.

ACP > General (tab) > Server Configuration > Search Settings > "Common word threshold"

A higher number will allow more occurrences. Zero will disable the feature.

The Search Index needs to be rebuilt after any change: Maintenance (tab) > Search Index > "Delete index" (then (re)"Create index").


Here are two posts to walk you through it. The quote is from the second link.

http://phpbbandbbcodes.com/viewtopic.php?t=194
http://support.ourboard.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1978
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Re: Off Topic Posts

Postby dilbert » Wed Sep 14, 2016 7:52 pm

I don't recommend putting a lot of time into curating this message board. There may be a few things here and there that would benefit from being organized, but for the most part it's probably best to let it alone. Honest curation is not the same as censorship, but people get offended when their stuff is moved. At the same time a disorganized message board is confusing to new users. So my recommendation is don't overdo it...
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Re: Off-Topic Posts

Postby sandman » Tue Feb 28, 2017 7:11 am

Not to be a complainer, but I'm not exactly thrilled with a couple off-topic posts made to The Underworld Empire thread in the Local History section. One had to do with Walmart and the other with some stupid video game. I realize that the thread is a little out there to begin with, but those two posts make it all seem like a total joke, which it is, but still the integrity of the thread is damaged by those two posts.
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Re: Off Topic Posts

Postby surfsteve » Tue Feb 28, 2017 8:30 am

Tough crowd!
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Re: Off Topic Posts

Postby CactusHugger » Thu Dec 07, 2017 8:39 am

I agree with sandman. Sticking closely to the topic of a thread helps maintain the integrity of the thread. At the same time, starting a new thread for every variation of a topic theme gets a little tedious and annoying. It's hard to know when to start a thread and when to post something which is related, but not exactly on topic to an existing thread. Hopefully moderators toss out off-topic posts on a regular basis and combine threads as necessary.
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