Useless Threads

useful observation Shazz. Informed our tech members.

Jason

Great idea. Or how about the ones that say "Nice Site!" in 50 threads...

We are trying to fix them too. Nice thought.


Jason

[QUOTE]
...guest begins a new topic (repeatedly) which other members responds to not realizing it's spam.
[/QUOTE]

In a case where someone has posted the same thread multiple times, and some members respond in different threads....
I usually "merge" the threads so that all the replies appear in the same thread, then I go delete the duplicates after the replies have been moved.

As you said.. merging and deleting is the right process since we don't have any other option. We are thinking of putting all the duplicate posts in a separate tool so that we can do the necessary validation. We will work on it soon. Let's see how it turns out.

Jason

I think one problem that leads to duplicate posts is the server response time. A user may "post" their thread, then the server doesn't respond so quickly, so in the mean time the user presses the "post" button again. When the server finally catches up, the user may have pressed submit 2-3-4 times before they are redirected.

I don't know if it's possible to set a timer on the server side (and then you get into identifying sessions in the case of guests), but maybe you could disallow any subsequent/new posts within 60 seconds or so of a submit request.

(Or maybe to get away from identifying sessions on the server side, you could write a function on the client side, handled through "onSubmit", that would prevent them from even pressing submit again until the server responds. Although that would require javascript to be enabled on the client, and you'd need special handling if the client has disabled javascript).

Well explained. We will look at all possibilities before implementing them. The challenge is to differentiate between genuine posters' duplicate posts as against spammers' which appears normal.

Jason