Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Bad post merging
- Thread starter cube
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
- Status
If you feel a post merge has resulted in confusion, please report the merged post and explain the problem. We'll take a look.
I see the problem being raised here, especially in regard to likes.
Part of the issue is that historically (and I'm talking about years of experience), multiple posts by the same user right after each other in a thread result in irritated feedback from others that all the individual posts clutter up a thread. And I can see that side of the issue, too.
My suggestion is that users can be more aware of combining comments and being clear in the comments, and we (= the staff) can be more aware of the complications that merges can cause, so that we make better choices about when to merge.
That way we work together so that discussions are clear and easy to read.
Part of the issue is that historically (and I'm talking about years of experience), multiple posts by the same user right after each other in a thread result in irritated feedback from others that all the individual posts clutter up a thread. And I can see that side of the issue, too.
My suggestion is that users can be more aware of combining comments and being clear in the comments, and we (= the staff) can be more aware of the complications that merges can cause, so that we make better choices about when to merge.
That way we work together so that discussions are clear and easy to read.
If you just add stuff to an old post people don't know that there is new content.
This is true if the post is in the middle of a discussion, not the case if there's a series of posts at the end of a thread. I don't think @annk is asking you to edit a post in the middle of a thread but instead as you add content, edit your last post and add your new thoughts.
No because people won't see that the thread changed and would have to re-read the last post to find the new content.
My understanding of the merge purpose is to gather related posts from other threads and move them into one place. What am I missing here ?
No.
My understanding of this function is that the posts that are merged are all from the same poster, in the same thread, posts that have been posted within a short space of time, rather than spread out over, or from, a number of different threads.
My understanding of the merge purpose is to gather related posts from other threads and move them into one place. What am I missing here ?
And, as @cube rightly remarks, - something I forgot to mention - post merging only happens when a poster makes consecutive posts in the same thread (within a specific time limit).
Sometimes the moderators merge manually which is unnecessary (this is what this thread is about).
Some users should just chill out. If they can't take one post per hour, they should just visit the tread once a day.
If notifications are always sent for every new post, then the implementation is too simple (I don't know, I reject them for every site and it annoys me when they pop up to ask if I want them or to share location).
Last edited:
If a user makes consecutive posts unnecessarily in a thread, we know from experience that that irritates other users. In those cases, we merge the posts. If there's a good, clear reason that a user posted more than one consecutive posts, we don't merge them.
Absolutely - *ahem* - some users do it repeatedly, to the point where a thread winds up with pages (yes, plural) of sequential posts by the same user without any interaction by anyone else.
The thing that's annoys __this__ user, is it lacks user-to-user communication, you know, the whole point of a public forum, it becomes a personal blog. Even worse, there's typically no context, so it becomes this stream-of-consciousness barrage, that sends notifications to subscribed users - so we pop in with the exception of some interesting discourse, and it's meaningless "text snippets" from a single user.
Then the site needs to improve its notification system. Some people don't use it and want to see when there is new content in a thread.
Unrelated posts keep getting merged.
Once again: consecutive posts irritate other users and clutter up threads. That's why we merge them on this site. No system is perfect, but this is the way it works here.
If you see a specific merge you feel created confusion, please report it. If you want to discuss your own posts and merges done to them, please send a Contact Us message so we can be specific in our answers.
No, but the responsibility for creating consecutive posts that can annoy lies with the user who creates the posts ;-)
Yeah, particularly if they are the only poster in the thread.
- Status