GrahamY, you (understandably) comment, in this post: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7124#108769

"I sometimes wonder whether anyone bothers reading these articles before posting. ....

But instead of addressing the article 75% of those who post start off on their hobby horse. From which we can deduce that it wouldn't matter what the facts are, ...."

You also state, in this post: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6745#101865
"Q&A, you're right, I do have an ideological reason for publishing this site. I believe that not only has everyone the right to an opinion, but the responsibility to engage with others of different opinions. Out of the exchange I believe that even if the truth doesn't arise, at least there will be a better understanding of other people's positions."

I'm just wondering how attainment of these two commendable objectives is advanced by the apparent prevention of posting further comments once a topic has been archived? I have been away from OLO for several months, and, noting this seeming posting policy change, have searched the Forum Rules and your posts since December 2007 for any announcement of such changes, but without success.

Its just that its not every day that one is granted an insight into the thinking of an High Court judge on a topical issue, so imagine my disappointment when I was unable to post, yesterday, what I thought was a relevant comment to Justice Michael Kirby's article 'Law making meets technology', published on 5 March 2008. It was not just a comment, but a 'thank you', for the article was useful to me in an open source IT forum discussion elsewhwere. It would seem that by closing off further comment after around what appears to be about three weeks, a degree of potential encouragement and feedback to article contributors is being foregone, and I cant see that as being in OLO's best interests.

Can you point me to an explanation of the changes? Or is there a way around this apparent obstacle to posting?

Forrest,
Can you make the problem with OLO a bit simpler ?
If Kirby has a few thoughts they are probably worth a bit of time , Cheers , Kartiya jim .

kartiya jim,

Up until at least as recently as December 2007 it was possible to revisit 'older' topic threads in the article discussion area of OLO, and post a comment. True, the relevant article may, after the passage of a few weeks, no longer have been attracting much comment, if in fact it ever did in the first case, but even a 'late' comment may be of interest to the author of the article, if not to the Forum at large.

If you go to Justice Kirby's article, you can still read it, but if you attempt to post a comment you will find the button 'greyed out', and you will get a message that the discussion has been archived. You don't get a 'Write new post' page.

I don't know that this is a problem with the OLO site software. I would have thought it represented an OLO policy change: its just that I haven't found any announcement of such a change from which to learn the reason for it. On the face of it, preventing comment seems to be contrary to the very purpose of OLO.

Hasn't anyone noticed this change?

I remember last year OLO contributor Antony Marinac posted a comment in an article discussion (on the Kanck Hansard topic) quite some months after the initial discussion had ended. His post seemed to be a useful and relevant footnote to the discussion and content of the article. And at least one other poster saw it, so its not just my paranoid imagination at work.

As of yesterday, it seemed that posting remained possible for only 23 days after an article was first posted on the Forum board. At least that was the case for Kirby's article. I don't know whether the period is the same for all articles, or there is some differential application of the limitation.

Hope that helps.

Forrest, we implemented an algorithm a little while ago to reduce our risk on threads. The specific issue that gave rise to the change was that someone used an old thread to post defamatory material about someone. OLO relies on complaint moderation. We can't scan everything that is posted, but as the traffic is fairly strong, we can generally rely on those of you who are posting to let us know about any problems.

But when a thread gets old the traffic becomes thin and it is possible for threads to be used for spamming, and in the case above, defamation.

The algorithm works on the basis of looking at how long a thread has been inactive and applying a cut-off after 3 weeks. When you complained it was set at 16, so you've had an effect. The system has been in place for a while, and your's is the only complaint that we have had. As threads are essentially conversational, and as a conversation that is 21 days cold is probably dead, I think it is a reasonable thing to do.

I'll also put something in the rules to say that threads die after this period of time.

GrahamY,

Thank you for the explanation as to the reason for, and effects of, the archiving of threads. I can understand your point about forestalling spam and defamatory posting. I did not realize the extent to which OLO relied upon the Forum community to help monitor such inappropriate posting.

I was not so much complaining about being unable to post, as I was surprised by it when reading back a little after an absence, as such prevention seemed self-defeating of the Forum's objectives.

Whilst agreeing with you that threads are in practise essentially conversational, there is a good argument (and your argument at that) that perhaps many of them should be less so, with posts addressed more to the content of the article in question. It is this juxtapositional aspect of comment to content that would seem the most desirable to be encouraged in threads. This, without denying the practicality of regarding a quiet thread as a dead conversation (especially for purposes of forestalling defamatory posting), is perhaps assisted by allowing posts to be made without any time limit.

Would it make any sense to retain the archiving feature, but to permit posts attempted after any archiving deadline to be moderator approved posts so long as they do not fall into the spam or defamatory category? If it is correct that very few posts have in past experience been made to 'old' threads, such moderator vetting may not be such a huge task, and would appear easily able to be batched for purposes of Forum administrative efficiency. Posters at such late stages would probably accept that a post may have to take, say, 24 hours before appearing in an archived thread.

I do think post-prevention after archiving undermines an important aspect of forums like OLO, that of providing a means of evasion of the editorial censorship or policy, seemingly practised in (what increasingly is becoming no longer) the mainstream media, against the expression of genuine diversity of opinion or factual evidence in certain areas. Some posts can serve as important matters of record in linked-to threads.

Forrest, I'll have to have a think about your suggestion and discuss it with our software engineer. It might be relatively easy to do as you suggest.

When I said that threads were conversational I wasn't meaning that they should be just about posters talking to each other, but more that they seem to follow the rules of conversation and that they die after a while. They are either hot, with lots of comments, or cold.