Okay, that's the sort of specific argument I was looking for, so let's bring it deeper.TheRealChris wrote:of course your example is right in the meaning, that the question wasn't answered right. but regarding to your CP question, I'm 100% sure, that there were beginners CP shown, somewhere inside any other thread. I can remeber anna, suggesting the dopsonfly CP to start with...
The point I'm trying to make here is that referencing the url did not work in this case, because the two threads were about fairly different topics - each of which can be a significantly long thread on its own. Now, had the thread not been locked after the url was referenced, the original poster would have had an opportunity to mention that the referenced url was not quite what he was looking for, thus sparking a longer discussion on examples of suitable intermediate CPs. That could have resulted in longer, more useful thread for future reference. Rather, what you have now is that everything that's remotely related to CPs will end up being put in a single thread. That topic has, in my opinion, grown too big for a single thread and thus lumping everything together produces something which would be fairly disorganised.
Since forums have the capability to allow cross referencing of threads, treating threads as a single line of sequentially linked posts might not be entirely productive, particularly for large topics. A more relevant paradigm would be that of a bunch of cobwebs - many subtopics linked together by a few common themes. With the linking, it's fairly easy to traverse the entire cobweb network and zero in on the information you want. The less frequently referenced threads will quickly fall off into the background - that's how forums are supposed to be. Instead, if new threads keep getting locked, it discourages people from posting in the referenced thread, and that just results in the referenced thread sinking to the bottom while keeping the locked ones floating all over.
Which brings us back to this problem - how do moderators decide if a particular query is the exactly the same as an earlier one? And, should this even be done, instead of letting normal forum dynamics handle the issue? Sure, sometimes it's easy to tell ("how do you do step 24 in the K-rose?"), but what happens when you have a broader query, like in the CP example?