2026 NEW Rules & Protocols

By all means give us a shout if you need to @Escarpment

One note on resurrected threads is the way that the database deals with them, particularly those that are pre-2012/2013 when we had a major crash that required many months of rebuilding in the background. Whilst you can resurrect threads, it does mean that it is then 'calling' on data from a very long time ago and that in turn can really slow things down quite significantly. Too much of that, and we all have a problem that we really don't want - - and if that has been created purely because someone is making an inane post or worse purely for engagement farming, then it is a definite no-no.

 

Sorry, I missed this earlier...

We can lock threads, but it is a manual process and almost as bad a resurrecting them from a database point of view - they are best left. Bedsides, there is no problem for them to be resurrected if there is good reason to do so.

Engagement farming is (amongst other things) posting something on social media or a forum purely to get a reaction that means someone either joins a cause or clicks a link - in the case of the forum, it would be the latter... These links can be done in such a way that when you click on them, it means that the person that posted it gets a financial reward (it is generally quite a small one for each click, but it mounts up) - often, these posts are of little benefit to the actual discussion, and often they will drag up historical posts/threads purely to latch on to it as it cons people into thinking it is a current, quite active discussion.

 

All those links have now been removed.

 

If you don't want email alerts, you can switch them off. If you go the top and click on your username, you get this drop down where you can select 'Preferences'


Then choose whether to watch threads you create or to get replies to them:



If you don't want any emails at all, then I am happy to have a look under the bonnet at your account and see if I can stop them entirely for you.