JIM - PLEASE: how can we tell if we're responding to active MC.o users?

of course

do we have freedom here... or limits?

yet if you're talking about me, mate, just say it -- i do not bite... but i only have web access a few days a week; my apologies.

i'm simply asking since these archives in which we swim reach back quite far, and only a relative few of those authors have joined-up here.

why should we reply to someone who is no longer "here"?

I call this trolling. Checking a bit of his posts around in addition to the thread-spamming just confirms it.

great answer -- thank you!

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thank you so much for explaining my thought so much better than myself can.

i do understand the need to keep DEAD THREADS going, but we surely might like to know if we are here -- or in a seance?

ha-haa! you nailed it... thank you!

<< Seems to me that some posters still don't realize they are talking to dead people. >>

I see dead people.
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Whiskey knows very well how to click on a username and see their posts at least. He has been stalking me around trolling with a lot of excessive cursing/profanity and name-calling, and then editing some of his worst posts to make them seem harmless. In addition to spamming threads with same subject as active existing ones. I would suggest you take a look at this user and make a judgement if this is what we want here.

Hi Jim, true, mousing or clicking over the username is how to tell among us dedicated users, but I think the bigger issue is user experience for the general population, and the impression that this community makes to readers/lurkers as they consider whether to continue following/joining this site. Making it even more visually obvious which data is imported and which is MC-origin would really enhance user experience, because it would allow realistic expectations of the timing and the origins of any community response, and it would make a better impression with visitors as they consider reading or joining discussions here. Clicking over usernames will be too unintuitive and obscure a behavior for many casual or non-technical users, and it's something readers (who may be the bulk of our future potential contributors) won't think to do and understand the importance of (they'll just think, "Why isn't anyone replying back? And why are so many posts saying goodbye to this site?").

Here's another thread where people have discussed this:
identifying posts from active MC.o users?? and I'll repost my ideas from there to here to keep it in one place:

bravo_bravo wrote:
> [...] I've been thinking it'd be great if the usernames on the imported posts could be regular text instead of a hyperlink to the main page, and the same black text color as the rest of the imported post. I think it'd be very helpful for users to be able to tell very easily just from glancing at a post if it's an archived post or not. Having to mouse over a username and note if the username links back to a profile page vs. the MC homepage is too obscure a detail to be user-friendly.

I think this would be very good for morale, too :) because you wouldn't want people replying to archived posts thinking that the archived user will get an email notification. Also, from the perspective of those who might just read the boards (and that might be a lot of people before they decide to join a site), you wouldn't want them to get the impression that many "people" on this site (that are actually just archived usernames) aren't replying back when people reply to them. If it could be clear to everyone including a casual board lurker which posts are MC-origin and which are IMDb-archived, there won't be any unnecessary disappointment or negative impression if imported usernames don't reply back from the void! :)
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Is it possible to add an "(inactive)" label next to imported usernames? And maybe put the imported data in different background-color boxes? Just some more ideas...

I greatly appreciate the fantastic work and huge progress you've made for the site, Jim. We're going to keep on rocking!

I always saw the message boards as being as much for posterity as for the others in the thread, Yes, it was to answer questions, but it is also bringing information together in one place, where others might learn from it.

Even if the OP never sees the reply (and there's no assurance they ever would, even if they belong to both sites) it bumps the thread up to the top of the list, and revives the topic.
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