Does anyone else hate it when the 3 or 4 page thread they were involved in gets merged with others and becomes part of a 27 page thread you have to wade through?

Does anyone know why they can't be left alone?

It can't be due to length and amount of text because when I commented on the lame disclaimers cluttering things up I was told that text doesn't steal bandwidth and makes no difference so what can it be?

 

It's done because people don't bother looking for existing threads on popular topics, and thus we end up with 5 threads discussing the exact same thing.

 

Exactly, WSB. Thanks.

At least we keep the threads. Other forums I'm on are a lot less forgiving and simple delete all reposts and scold you for not looking. At most you'll get a move/merge and a mild scolding here.

 

But why does it matter if there's one thread or three? If people are enjoying themselves and want to participate in one and skip two others what difference does it make other than making all of them easier to read and keep up with since they're shorter?

 

Fore one more threads are more difficult to moderate. And also duplicate threads mean information is less centralized and more difficult to find in the future.

For example: We have about 30 gazillion threads on engine swaps for the Lancer. Way out of control. If someone were to try to find information on their own they would have to sift through countless pages of garbage posts to find any technical information. Many of these threads have strayed far off topic or contain little or no helpful replies. The more there are, the more slip through our fingers as staff members.

 

So when they are merged are they also edited to eliminate extraneous posts? That would make it make more sense since it compacts and solidifies the information. Of course, the people who get eliminated from the thread might disagree.

 

i love it when they merge. that way i get ALL the information that has been split around. if you were involved in one thread, you can easily find it again, its not that hard.

 

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It really depends upon how much free time the moderator doing it has. In the case of particularly large merges it's generally not feasible to go through and decide what stays and what goes. If a thread is only a few pages though then it will likely be trimmed as well. I'd have to say that generally speaking they are not cleaned up very much (if at all) because of the generally large and/or frequently reposted nature of threads that require merging in the first place.