Big help needed with this idea

[dezoris]

Much of my forum, is some pretty technical knowledge, and the problem is newbies may not understand, and just repost crap that is already out there.

I got a post from one of my forum leaders that would help us out greatly, but can any of you create something like it?

I can tell you that having a tech archive only helps the non-newbie. The innovation is to have someone have the key words identified in their posted question, and then have the board automatically do the search and kick up suggested thread to read first....

My fight is there are many car boards that are just ricey playgrounds, and no one REALLY talks cars and gets technical.
What can I do or can anyone help me?

[Logician]

In vbulletin, while sending PM, there is an "verify" box which pre-checks if pm receiver can receive your pm. (nice hack btw!) I'm planning to add a similiar "verify" form button next to NEW THREAD Subject forum and by clicking it, you can search if subject of your message matches with any existing board message before sending. But it's not a very easy hack to code (not design, but for security and performance reasons) so I cant promise it will be finished soon. Maybe it can help you a bit.

IMO your exact request can not be done. It's not easy for a hack to identify correct keywords in a message and it's even harder to check the entire database with these keywords without decreasing MYSQL performance. An "light" version can be coded but will not be very succesful, on the other hand a well-coded hack will be hard to design and will effect your db performance.

Maybe you should insistently request your members to use the search before creating a new thread. You can design Mandotary pause warnings, java alert etc to get their attention if sticky threads do not work..

Regards,
Logician

[dezoris]

Well thanks for your help. Let me clarify my intention and you can tell me if it is still way off. How about this?

If we pick lets say 20 keywords like, "Big Time, assface, fred's toolbox etc." Is there a way for Vbulletin to generate a reply with threads from the past 30-90 days or whatever we pick to post as a reply to their thread?

Like my post, I just made,
I would want the following words highlighted

"Repost, keyword"
And then have an automatic reply posted or even emailed with topics on that.

As far as Db performance, I would prefer that this feature be specific to a certain forum only.

This is asking a lot, but as you know, people come to the boards to interact mainly, many people just want to ask, and they do, but like many of us answering the same questions over and over means when we see this same thing, we tend to ignore it, so if that happens at least they could have some reply with other threads that have the same stuff in it they posted about.

So is this still just as big of a pain in the ass as the first question I asked?
Thanks

[Logician]

Compared to your first idea, no it's not very hard to code, it's feasible.. At least you saved the coder from adding a semi-AI feature to get the correct keywords from the message..

[dezoris]

So, when can you have this done, I want it on my desk by Monday morning

How do I go about making an official request.