Neowin needs a "thread already exists" warning system

[Atomic Wanderer Chicken]

I don't know how many times I posted something and then get it locked because someone else has posted the same thing within hours before. Neowin needs a system that tells a poster that a similar thread was already posted. First off, the search on Neowin doesn't work entirely well, I have searched for similar threads but it didn't find any, and later I find my thread  locked.
Here is how the system would work.

 

Please don't sarcastically tell me that we already have this and its called search, that doesn't pertain to this. I use the search and it doesn't effectively find posts a majority of the time.  I have to go in manually in to forum sections to find a similar thread.
 
1. A member creates a post.

2. Then the members hits post topic.

3. A red warning box appears and says "Sorry, post already exists"

This would save members a whole lot of trouble and would prevent locked threads. 

[Semtex]

Mehhh, we have Mods, they also need some work :rofl:

[Atomic Wanderer Chicken]

Craigslist had (or still has) something like this and it prevented people from posting a similar for sale ads.

[Barney T. Administrators]

Mehhh, we have Mods, they also need some work :rofl:

 

:no:

[LimeMaster]

That sounds kinda complex. I don't think this feature would be easy to implement.

[Semtex]

:no:

As a disclaimer, I'm also Mod on one of biggest Polish IT forums, so I know this pain ;)

[Atomic Wanderer Chicken]

I don't think they particularly like going around and closing threads though.

Mehhh, we have Mods, they also need some work :rofl:

[b10h4z4rd]

You could probably take a minute or so before posting and search just in case someone else has posted it.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

You could probably take a minute or so before posting and search just in case someone else has posted it.

that's part of the point that he's trying to make though. at the end of his first paragraph he mentions that

 

the problem is the similar thread could be buried a few pages back or not be in an expected forum section.

 

and the search function isn't always very reliable on IPB (especially when you're trying to search threads that have numbers in them as the search won't allow words with less than 3 characters. aka you can't put numbers)

[Atomic Wanderer Chicken]

I do use the search but it doesn't find what I'm looking for most of the time, so I have use manually search the real world news sections for instance. I usually find the post I'm looking for by manually searching,

[jakem1]

Original thread: PS4 sells through 1 million in N.A. in 24hrs

Duplicate thread: 1 Million PS4s sold in first 24 Hours

 

It shouldn't have been too difficult to find the original thread in a search.

[Brian M. Veteran]

The original is the first result for ps4 million

[Doli]

Original thread: PS4 sells through 1 million in N.A. in 24hrs

Duplicate thread: 1 Million PS4s sold in first 24 Hours

 

It shouldn't have been too difficult to find the original thread in a search.

 

(Y)

Looks like he used searched "This Forum" in Back Page news instead of searching in the Sony sub forum in Gamer's Hangout. There is also an option on the search button to change "This Forum" to "Forums" and that will search all the forums.

[Gerowen]

I've actually seen this on some other forums.  When you post something, it scans for keywords, performs a quick search, and if another topic closely fits the keywords, it will give you a warning page that says something like, "There may already be a discussion on this topic, please check the list below and if your topic is still new, you can continue by clicking Post".  The "list below" would be a handful of topics with similar keywords.

[Phouchg]

^ It's actually not a bad suggestion at all, only probably involves hammering of servers more than user's search alone would do.

[Eric Veteran]

You can always use Bing/Google with site:neowin.net tacked on to the search term, too. It will pick anything up that hasn't been posted very recently. Search bots crawl here all the time.

[Hum]

I can see this malfunctioning and members complaining -- "why can't I post this topic ?!"

 

Even more work for Mods.

 

Not worth the trouble.

[The Evil Overlord]

I don't know ipb programming, but I can't see why not, although it would seem to be copying yahoo answers,

I believe their system looks at words, and before it allows you to post, it warns you that a similar thread exists..

[Steven P. Administrators]

You should request this as a feature over on IPS :P

[HawkMan]

For "news" you could also just do a mark I eyeball on "view new content" it'll usually show up on page 1. 

[HawkMan]

For various news you could do it "simple" though. require all news posts, be it gaming or tech to have one or more source links. then when posting do a compare against previous "news" posts, and if the source link exist warn about it. 

[riahc3]

Hello,

You can always use Bing/Google with site:neowin.net tacked on to the search term, too. It will pick anything up that hasn't been posted very recently. Search bots crawl here all the time.

Exactly what I was going to post :)

Besides that, a system similar to what XDA has could be implemented. In XDA, you put a title in your thread such as "PS4 sells over 1 million" It does a quick AJAX search and shows similar topics such a "In 24 hours, PS4 sells 1 million" and you can click them instead of making the thread. There are problems with this:

1: Tagging would make this feature so much quicker

2: Work on servers

3: I dont know if IPB is ready for this (XDA uses vBulletin)

That said, I think if you use correctly search, you can mostly view a topic and most mods merge similar topics anyways.

[Decebalvs Rex]

Don't fix what's not broken. Similar posts are not that similar on Neowin , freedom of posting and reader's respect are two of the things wich sparkle the forum engine. Devs should think about it as this system won't be error free nor helping in any way.

[Charisma Veteran]

Don't fix what's not broken. Similar posts are not that similar on Neowin , freedom of posting and reader's respect are two of the things wich sparkle the forum engine. Devs should think about it as this system won't be error free nor helping in any way.

Yeah, it's not generally too much of an issue. The "merge" feature here means all the posts on a particular topic are visible in one area, so unless you're just unusually hurt for some reason if your thread gets closed/merged due to it being a dupe... it's nothing to worry about. :)

[Lingwo]

I think it would be quite difficult to implement to work efficiently.

Most of the time it wouldn't work and stop people from posting.