Remove the "Moved Thread" redirects

[SuperSajuuk]

So I was navigating around the forum and I keep coming across sections of the forum which are littered in thread redirections, left over when the CL's or forum mods move a thread.

In a few instances, these threads are moved to sections that only mods and CL's can access, so the redirects for them are pointless as they will leave a link that nobody can click through. Example: https://community.bt.com/t5/Bills-Packages/Re-BT-possible-worst-service-ever-you-decide/td-p/1560123

Could the mods please do more to get rid of these pointless redirects or at least look into ways to stop them being generated when moved to certain boards? They don't do much except clutter the forum section and hide the useful posts from view. If it's even possible with Lithium, can they be set to expire after a day or two? Some sections of the forum are just littered in so many thread redirect notices that it's impossible to find actual threads.

The same should be done for posts: there's no real need to leave a "Moved this post" redirect in threads and it just looks horribly messy when you look through some threads, only to find that the majority of the posts are just mods/cl's moving posts.

Thanks.

[Keith_Beddoe]

I remove my redirects after seven days, but I don`t know what others do, as I leave theirs alone. I have a Firefox macro which simplifies it.

The placeholders are initially needed, otherwise anyone who has a post moved, will think its been deleted.

I am not sure if the mods do a cleanup on placeholders.

[SuperSajuuk]

@Keith_Beddoe I agree that the redirects should be there, but only for a short time. At most, a day or two, as someone will eventually see that the thread has been removed. As far as I'm aware, all new users have their settings set so that they will get email notifications when someone posts on their thread, so even if they can't find the thread through the redirect, there will be a link via their emails.

It would be nice if the thread move redirects be removed over time though. Especially those ones like I linked, which are redundant to keep around.

[SuperSajuuk]

Also, a useful feature would be to display an alert notification at the top of the forum when someone uses the mentions system on their name. This way, if they dont' see the email notification, they'll log in and see "X people have mentioned your name on the forums. Click here to see the posts" at the top as a banner.

Though, I have no idea how customisable this software is as I've never used it.

[Keith_Beddoe]

The agreement between the mods and CLs, was that the placeholders would be left for seven days, as some people do not log on very often.

At present, I have 19 placeholders in my queue starting 17th November.

E-mail notification have been delayed recently.

I use RSS feeds so I don`t need notifications.

[SuperSajuuk]

@Keith_Beddoe 7 days seems reasonable, assuming that the redirects do eventually get removed. As you've indicated, you do remove your placeholders, which is good forum etiquette, but I do see a lot of redirects from others that just get left ad infinitum and never get cleaned up. Think some go back many years from previous mods who no longer work on the forum 😛

Redirects, like the one I linked above, that just link to posts nobody else can read, should probably just be deleted as they're essentially pointless though 😕

[Keith_Beddoe]

The one you mentioned goes nowhere, because the destination was deleted by the moderator for reasons that I know about.

I have removed it.

I cannot comment on other ones, as that is an issue for the moderators to deal with.

[gg30340]

Re-directs should not be removed until the OP has acknowledged the re-direct by posting on the thread or at least seven days after it was re-directed.

The reason being that there were complaints that the OPs posted on one board and when it was moved they did not know how to find it.

It seems to work well as there have been very few if any complaints since that system was introduced.

[Keith_Beddoe]

The question is, how many of them are being removed?

They actually show up as unanswered, and if you have an RSS reader, like the one built into Thunderbird, you can click on this link to get a listing.

https://community.bt.com/bt/rss/search?advanced=true&filter=labels%2CopenResponse&openresponse=true&...

You can then filter those by name and date, and see the placeholders.

[SuperSajuuk]

@gg30340 As I mentioned above, I don't mind the very early redirects, for the reasons you've already mentioned. However, I take issue with the redirects that are just simply left there and never cleaned up, months and months "after" the OP already posted in their thread, as it causes clutter and makes it difficult to browse forum boards effectively.

If not cleaned up, then maybe a toggle setting could be introduced (if it's remotely possible) that allows users to hide the redirects from view for themselves after they have viewed such a redirect.

The in-line post redirects can get quite cluttersome in some threads though. There was a thread which I read in which a majority of the posts were just notifications that the post in question was moved, which isn't useful imo.

Keith makes a good point as well for those who use RSS readers, they can be irritating to see in a list, as they count as an unanswered post.

[gg30340]

I do not see it as a big deal that somebody has to "take issue" with it but each to their own.