How useful do you think it would be automatically merge "double posts"? So if someone posts, and then a bit later on the same person posts again and there have been no other replies, the new post is automatically added to the end of the previous post rather than creating a new post. Any comments?

I guess I'm keen on this idea, my web training of arrogance says I should double post if I want lots of attention and feeling like I'm not getting any.
But here you have the shoutbox for that, and really I should be merging posts myself, if you have a script to encourage my lessoning of self importantance. I say good on ya

I agree that this would be a good thing. I have on numerous occasions thought to myself, 'shouldn't that be merged with the above post?' So an automated proces would be great.

Spack wrote:Any comments?

i think there should be a time limit afterwhich a second post in a row isnt automatically considered a double post. while "bumping" is against the rules, if you have something useful to add then you can legitimately bring a thread back to the top of its forum (even if the current last post is your own).

maybe set it to only automatically merge double posts within 1 hr from when the first one was written?

unless of course it still registered this new post in terms of flagging up new posts to be read/moving the thread to the top of its forum, in which case there would be no need for a time limit (although us Mods would need a way of separating illegal *bumps* from legitimate updates - maybe it could show what was the part that was added as a second post, e.g. "merged second post as follows:...")

theres also the issue of post counts: a legitimate update should register a +1 postcount, where as an illegal bump (which should ordinarily be deleted on sight) should not.

i dont think double posting is really a big issue at the moment (although the number of times ive had to delete one of my own double posts because i clicked "quote" instead of "edit" when i wanted to add something to a post of mine... ) - maybe leave it up to posters to report it so Mods can do it manually (and remind people that as they can delete their own post at the end of a thread, if they accidentally double post they should go back and edit the first post and then delete the second one) for now, and see how it goes?

cheers

~ Tim

Damn Tim, it's almost like you read the spec of the mod I was going to use. It does indeed have a configurable time limit for determining if a post from the same user is a "double" or should be kept separate.

I'll look into whether the mod also updates the last post time for the new post flagging. If it doesn't I'll see if I can add that myself, shouldn't be too hard. Post counts isn't an option - the way the board calcs post counts is by actual rows in the table, I'm not sure it'd be easy to increment it by merged posts too.

Good idea about the reminder - although they can now delete their own post in the middle of a thread too

I'll leave the poll running a while, but I may just leave this one for a while before implementing anyway.