This issue is about the "forum user experience". I cannot speak for the other moderators, but I would implement whatever members want, as long as it is practical and does not entail any additional work for moderators, and ideally reduces work. However, I am doubtful that there would be consensus amongst members about how this should be dealt with.
In my limited experience it does appear that other forums lock duplicate threads on
topical subjects rather than merging them. I am not so sure that aproach is suited to threads on
non-topical subjects.
The major problem is that there are no guidelines or criteria regarding when threads should or should not be merged. A while ago I attempted to formulate some as follows:
slowster wrote: 6 Jul 2023, 11:57am
The following are my suggested guidelines. Obviously there would still be a degree of subjectivity involved in applying them.
1. The default starting point should always be not to merge or split, i.e. avoid intervening as much as possible.
2. The benefits must substantially outweigh the disadvantages when threads are merged or split. Regard should therefore be given to:
a. The potential for it to result in members who have bookmarked or subscribed to threads getting notifications which they do not want (and vice versa?).
b. The potential for any links to threads or individual posts to be broken by merging or splitting. We will not know if there are any such links, and therefore would need to err on the side of caution.
c. The ages of the threads. A subject may have been discussed at some length a year or more ago. That discussion may have involved different members and/or have been largely forgotten. It is not necessarily of value to effectively bump old threads by merging them with a new one. If the new thread has been prompted by some new development, the default presumption should be that the new development is sufficient to justify starting a separate new thread. In contrast two new threads started to discuss the same topical issue should usually be merged.
d. The subject matter. This is a cycling forum. The Tea Shop is not intended to be a curated resource of information about non-cycling subjects. Therefore in general non-cycling related threads should not be merged (Edit - with the exception of new threads started about the same topical subject, e.g. in response to a news article). For cycling related threads, the decision whether to merge/split should be determined by the importance and value of the technical content. For example threads about touring on the same Eurovelo route should almost certainly be merged, unless one is so old that it is known/likely that the useful information in it is now out of date. However, we also want to avoid a thread containing useful technical information becoming too broad, e.g. the thread 'Cycling using trains (in UK and EU)' has grown like Topsy - with hindsight it would have been better if it had been split early on between UK and EU, and now it would be far too difficult and time-consuming to do that.
...
Regarding links being broken, I *think* that might only occur with a links to a thread, where that thread is merged with another older thread. I *think* that links to posts will not be broken by merging or splitting, because I believe their unique identifying post number is not changed. However, I am not entirely sure what does and does not result in the unique identifying number of a post or a thread being changed, e.g. this case about which mjr complained -
viewtopic.php?t=156686. Similarly, I do not know how merging and splitting threads will affect notifications for the threads.
I gave some examples above, because it's necessary to consider how any possible guidelines might work for different situations. Here is a current actual example:
This thread -
viewtopic.php?t=159271 has been reported with the suggestion that it should be merged with this thread -
viewtopic.php?t=158558. Do you think they should be merged? If so, what is the rationale for merging?
