Actually I'd say that your basis may be off in this. The facts are ... that more than 85% of this type of activity is not based at all from the moderators actions, but rather the moderator acting on behalf of members - several if not more - who have contacted him/her with suggestions to merge said threads. Very rarely, if ever, does a moderator simply wake up one day and decide to merge a thread. What you and others may want to be aware of is the tremendous input volume we get from our members from the RBP. It is not really used only for Report Bad Post, but to report things like suggestions to merge threads. Anyway, just a small factoid for your consideration.
Originally Posted by
num1bearsfan
I've noticed an unusual practice here on FT. It seems that if you try to start a topic about anything, quite often a moderator will take it upon themselves to merge it into an older topic of similar nature. It doesn't happen all of the time, but more often than I'd like.
For example.. Lets just say I start a topic about well, anything.. I'd typically get a remark about learning how to use the search function
then the moderator would proceed to merge the topic into one with 4,387 pages that started in 2003!
I mean, sometimes you gotta just let some threads die.. I mean I don't know about you guys, but when I participate in a thread, I like to read the whole thing first so I can sort of understand where the conversation is going. I also sort of have an expectation for others to do the same as well. But with these super old massive threads, it's just not possible.
I'd be curious to hear what other people think about this.