8
votes
Merging threads?
I think it'd be useful to merge duplicate threads when there's two topics that are very close to each other. I don't want the stackExchange style "closed as duplicate of x," but I think it would be worthwhile to simply have the comments moved to the oldest thread and transfer any votes that are different users on each topic.
This way, we aren't losing discussion by flat-out deleting topics that are dupes, and we're also able to take some sort of action on threads that are dupes.
Just a thought.
For what it's worth, HackerNews does support topic merging, as well as making a non–top–level comments top–level if they deserve a separate discussion. I've had several mods tell me that Tildes is not HackerNews, but there are a lot of mechanics there that methinks could be ported to Tildes.
I think this is a fair idea. Maybe even allow merging of same-topic, different sources. Then the merged thread would have OPs. Probably would want it to be limited to only merging of links and not posts, even if they are on the same topic. May want to encourage the not first poster to manually merge a la posting their OP as a comment.
I think this is not necessary. Duplicate threads are here, but it's not necessarily bad thing. Some topics deserve another, separated, discussion, so new opinions don't mix with opinions several months old - which would be very confusing, at least for me. Especially if the topic evolves fast and the previous comments aren't relevant to today's state.
What I think could be done that is simmilar but not so aggressive as merging topics - we could simply store links to other simmilar topics in the sidebar. We already do it manually for lots of posts in ~tildes anyway.
There is an even better way. When there is already the same link posted recently the form should just direct you to the original post instead of creating a duplicate.