I'll start by saying that this has probably come up before but I think its needs reiterating.

Everyday new posters arrive which is cool, and then start new threads about topics that are already being discussed or have been discussed and finished with. I would like to suggest that when clicking on the 'new topic' icon a message appears suggesting that this topic might have been discussed/already have a thread ongoing and would you like to use the search function please to prevent duplicates? I know of several websites that use this function and dont have as much of a hofflenosh problem. (hofflenosh: a word coined by members of warseer.com to describe any reoccurring thread topic that periodically gets argued round in circles by the same people, none of whom are likely to ever change their opinion or stance on said topic)

It would also solve the problem of how few people are likley to respond to the nth thread about umptyump. People get bored of repeating themselves, especially if they have to do so at length and type a massive essay each time their point needs repeating (I belive some members of this site actually save arguments that come up over and over again and simply copy and paste...but that just leads us back to hofflenosh!

Can we possibly have the search function as a simple and effective tool to use againt this problem?

I don't see the problem really other than taking up space on the forum bandwith (does that make sense? Im just making it up as I go really). Why get so frustrated. I'm sure it is extra work for the Mod team, but I've been here longer than you and haven't really seen too many threads started that already exsisted in the same context.

So then if people stop making reposts of the same topic, that leads to "necroposting" bring back old topics from the dead. Essentially, either way people repeat themselves to rebuttle the new posts on the old threads.

Just about any topic you find on here is going to have been discussed to some extent at some point within the last six years, so I think a system like that would be redundant. Unless the topic relates to a news story or recent discovery then it will have been covered before. New threads give newer members a chance to discuss the topic, new information can be presented and fresh viewpoints discussed. Nobody is obligated to participate in a discussion if they've taken part in a similar one before, and if they do then it's their choice.

In any case I don't think a system such as you've suggested would be practical, I can't see any way in which it would work on Invision Board. We'd be looking at a pattern/phrase recognition system for the topic titles, a new database table containing indexed keywords for use with the system, plus due to the way the post screen works the system would only be able to warn the poster about similar topics after they'd pressed submit, which wouldn't be much use.

It would mean a tremendous amount of work to put something like that together for very little benefit, so I'm going to have to pass on this idea unfortunately.

Thanks for suggesting it though.

not sure if important or anything but a few times doing searches while clicking the pages going back in history I get things like:
"Fatal error: Call to undefined function: parse_attachments() in /home/unexplai/public_html/forum/sources/lib/search_mysql_ftext.php on line 365"

Just a heads up I guess? Could be nothing? But I'm unable to search some history sometimes because of it. Haven't done much to see how reproduceable it is just thought I'd mention it.

This is a documented bug that's due to be fixed in the next Invision Board release.

I've had that also. More recently though, I've been trying to search for a word, but my results keep coming up "Unfortunately your search didn't return any results." Except that I know the word exists on these boards since I have used it in two of my most recent posts, and more before then.

One search I stuck in contained the word "Exorcist" or something like that, it came back with about 10 zillion posts, now if you think I am going to trawl through that lot just to check I don't post something similar to someone else's posting made fours years ago, you have another think coming, I will end up looking like this --->