Inconsistent ruling RE forum topic deletions and merging

[the8thark]

Shared from a chat I had to a moderator, I feel all everyone needs to hear this.

Please keep the rulings consistent. This applies to the whole moderation team. Sometimes you all want the talk consolidated in a single topic. Other times you all want the factual information separated from the discussion and opinionated talk. Also new topics here do generate conversation whereas older stickies generally do not.

We don't want the forums here to die due to lack of member participation right?

 

[Fraxinus]

Can't say I'm certain of the context here, but generally, there are some topics that frequently get threads, and to eliminate redundancy this is responded to by the moderation staff merging them all together to form a master thread, which is typically stickied. A good example of this is the "Favorite Zelda Game" thread. If this master thread did not exist, I would assure you many new members would create their own version of this thread, as the Zelda section is naturally one of our active sections and the last favorite game thread might be pushed back a few pages. To someone who is unfamiliar with navigating the thread lists, they will assume the thread doesn't exist and make their own. Keeping the master and having it stickied will help prevent this. It also essentially ensures that if your thread is related to the sticky, it will be merged with it, due to its nature of being a "master" thread. All discussion should stay in the master thread for efficiency.

Other topics are different enough from themselves to warrant staying as their own thread; however, timeframes between when the threads have received their last response are also a factor in whether or not a thread will be merged with its predecessor. Duplicate threads that are currently active and receiving responses generally are always merged if they bring identical discussion to the table.

 

[the8thark]

The context is I've seen topics by many people that were clearly different enough to warrant a new topic got one. However the moderators merged them together.
On the other hand I've seen nearly duplicate topics unmerged.

@Satan I agree with you. That's what should be happening, but at times, speaking in general here, that just is not happening. That's why I'm calling this out. The issue is not wide spread, it's not happening that often, but when it does it's really disappointing. To see these topics not get the light of day they deserve. I'm not the only one to have mentioned this over the past couple of uears or so.

Seeing the topic you put effort into writing and differenting from existing topics, merged into oblivion is disheartening. We should be encouraging as many new topics as possible. Of cause the basic ones like "Your favourite X" can be merged, I agree with you there.

 

[Spiritual Mask Salesman]

There was a thread I made about the changes to Nintendo's official japanese Zelda site with BotW and LA. I felt my version touched on enough different points, yet it still got merged with another thread. It was disappointing. Besides that, I wrote a theory which was merged with a really old, kind of similar theory, which didn't make sense to me (this was years ago though, back in 2012).

It doesn't happen often, but I agree, if a thread is unique enough yet sort of similar to an existing thread, it should be evaluated with care rather than just merged on a whim.

 

[Vanessa28]

Personally I think the issue lies in the way a thread is written. People are inclined to ditch a thread as a duplicate when a title holds similar words. Like for instance the Nintendo Direct or E3 threads. When there is a stickied topic about all news related to Nintendo Direct or E3 people and someone creates another topic about something specific related to the same events, people are more eager to report the thread as a duplicate. I agree that's not always the case. And another thing is reading. People aren't always reading the whole thread because of different reasons. This can be annoying and I can understand your frustration completely. So yes we should definitely work on that to do better. Do better reading before making a merge. But on the other hand, when there is a thread stickied with a title as "all news related to Nintendo Direct/E3" the purpose of that thread is very clear.