Topic merging a bit over the top?

[sandra_17]

Any way to slow that down? I get email notifications of new topics that are of interest to me, and almost immediately they are merged with an existing topic that often isn't close to the same subject matter.

Trying to then find that post/topic-within-ten-topics is nearly impossible. I've been on AC for years, for four different Note phones and two Note tablets. I've never seen it like this. Makes the forum far less helpful.

Seems over the top.

EDITED to add:
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This issue is in the Note 7 forum. And at a time when folks are having immediate issues. This is extremely frustrating.

 

[akin_t]

I think it's over the top too. Not like this forum will be alive much longer. So why not just let it be?

 

[Ry]

Moved from the Note 7 forum to the forum feedback forum

 

[sandra_17]

Moved from the Note 7 forum to the forum feedback forum

I had posted it there to hopefully get the attention of some of the mods who are NOT doing the merging. Afraid it will get missed here

 

[Almeuit]

We normally merge if there is a topic already made. An example is the new article about the ban on planes. There were 5 new threads this afternoon all linking to the same article. That gets a bit redundant and we usually will merge things like this.

Either way I brought this to Aquila's attention since he can pull fancy numbers and metrics to see if we can handle it better.

 

[Shanda5303]

Any way to slow that down? I get email notifications of new topics that are of interest to me, and almost immediately they are merged with an existing topic that often isn't close to the same subject matter.

Trying to then find that post/topic-within-ten-topics is nearly impossible. I've been on AC for years, for four different Note phones and two Note tablets. I've never seen it like this. Makes the forum far less helpful.

Seems over the top.

EDITED to add:
~
This issue is in the Note 7 forum. And at a time when folks are having immediate issues. This is extremely frustrating.

Are they deleting topics posted by people who are talking about keeping the Note 7? I swear every time I click a topic it says this is not valid anymore.... It's kind of frustrating if that's what they are doing

 

[Golfdriver97]

Are they deleting topics posted by people who are talking about keeping the Note 7? I swear every time I click a topic it says this is not valid anymore.... It's kind of frustrating if that's what they are doing

It's possible the error you are seeing is the old URL for the thread that was merged into another one.

 

[Aquila]

Thanks for the feedback

I'm looking at the Note 7's first page and there are 15 threads that are redundant, 3 in the wrong section and 2 that are new threads for which I haven't seen another topic. From that data, I would say that almost nothing current is being merged to existing threads and that most of the new threads have been created by people not following the guidelines, searching for existing threads, posting in the correct forum, etc.

The primary purpose of moderator organizing activity the Note 7 section at this point is to help people looking for help returning their devices to get complete and accurate information, and hopefully to be able to do that without wading through hundreds of pages of nonsense. It is very difficult for someone who googles "how do I return my Note 7 on Verizon" to figure out what to do if the first 15 results are all people asking the same question in 15 threads within our forum and none of them have been answered. To help alleviate that issue we created one thread and made it sticky with links to the answers on all major carriers and ensured we still had threads for third party, Canadian and UK carriers, Best Buy, Costco, Target, etc.

If there is a high rate of moving and merging you'll see the front page fill up with redirects and currently there are zero of those, so hopefully if this was an issue it has already died down. There are no efforts underway to block discussion of the device, even if the primary topic isn't intended to help people escape this situation. To be totally candid, we've actually given people a lot more leeway in that section than normal because we recognize it's a highly stressful situation and that people are going to make mistakes due to that stress.

As always, we're looking for ways to do things better and if you have ideas that we could implement, hit me up at matt.luciano@mobilenations.com

TLDR version: Our job as moderators in a situation like this isn't to shut down discussion that's developing, as long as it is within the limits of the Community Guidelines.. it's to make sure we're helping people that are here looking for answers. So with that in mind, most of our activity will be focused on making sure that those answers are easy to find and that people who sign up for the forums in order to get more details on how they should handle it are being welcomed by the community and are getting straightforward, accurate and helpful information. That's what this section is for: http://forums.androidcentral.com/samsung-galaxy-note-7-returns/ - for people to get help on returning their devices. The majority of the information in the parent thread that's just talking about what happened, what Samsung is going to do, etc. is irrelevant to the returns and is largely ignored.