Problem of MSFS Not starting (Defender related) seems solved.
Ther was a main thread discussing this problem, when solved I marked as Muted in order not following it.
To my surprise I have found 5 different posts with this same subject!
Nope. I consolidated over 30 posts in the beginning just to get one central post to be voted on for Manual Cache. That was back around Launch Month.
Two-headed problem: People don’t or can’t search for already existing posts, and there is no way a Community Manager (or even a team of them) could keep up policing and rounding up posts.
It depends, if the topic is one that has been deemed “overly negative” such that they would like to shove it all into one thread so it doesn’t look like it’s coming up over and over…yeah then your posts might get merged into another topic.
If it’s not on the “list of things we want to downplay”, then they will just let it pop up over and over and over.
You can flag duplicate posts to the @moderators by clicking FLAG then “something else” and typing a message to the mods. I think that’s what you should do with these. If they can, they will combine them - although as far as I understand it votes cannot be combined, so joining 2 threads with votes will lose the votes for one of the threads.
Plus of course people should search before posting. I’ve tried to point this out to people at times, only to be told where I can stick it, but hey, there you go.
I always look for a topic before I open a new one. I read three topics this morning, but they dealt with a different problem. Since I don’t have time to hunt through all grammatical, phonetic and irregular variations of the spelling of my problem by the search engine, it still happens that a topic already exists (several times). I do not let myself be blamed for this. Then the search engine is cra p.
By the way, I wouldn’t underestimate the effect of such thread explosions, so - see above - sometimes it’s also a method to let it run.
Moderators are still doing it, but it’s not easy with all the crap people post. During alpha there was a lot less noise so the moderators’ job was easier.
You can help by reporting duplicate threads and asking them to be consolidated.
Perhaps I’m missing something but how do you “flag” a post? I’ve been looking for the option but only see “like” “link” and “bookmark” against posts.
Thanks for replying. My problem is I don’t seem to have 3 dots near the Reply button. Correction…they appear on my replies but not against other peoples posts. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding how to use it.
The three dots on my reply only open up a delete option.
Hi @TuftyMeerkat37, the ability to flag a message is restricted for a short period of time, but after people spend more time in the forum it is automatically enabled by the forum software. In other words, users start out as a “Trust Level 1” and quickly advance to a “Trust Level 2”. Here is a link that discusses what requirements are needed to advance to TL2.
Prior to advancing to TL2, if you see anything that needs our attention, the best course of action is to send a direct message to @moderators. Feel free to let us know if you have any additional questions on this.
Thanks @SlippedSheep437. I will add, often times a post is 95% an exact duplicate, but when we merge it the original poster will be upset about the 5% that is unique to their situation. So sometimes it can be a tough call, and a no-win situation. But feel free to bring them to our attention regardless.
Also, the daily post count is exponentially higher compared to the alpha days, so we recently brought on additional moderators to help us keep up. Thanks for the feedback, and feel free to bring up any additional thoughts. Always available via direct message to @Moderators if need be.
I would say it’s time to care a bit less about upsetting malcontents because of their 5% “uniqueness” and a bit more about keeping the forum flowing and enabling constructive and actually interesting discussion without it being suffocated by spam.
We certainly do not need a new thread every time someone is “done with this” or “fed up with this” or similar 100% unconstructive rants, with the usual suspects then making sure to bump them as much as possible.
Thanks for the explanation. I know I’ve read 1000s of posts and visited the forum everyday since launch. I think it’s the last 3 on the list I’m missing as (unlike some), I only reply to posts if I’ve something constructive to add.