^this^

Look at the timestamp in the grey bar on top of the first post.  That's when the contest was posted.

You can also look at the date when that contest ends in the first post.  That'll tell you for sure if it's over or not.

There's no "trawling" involved, it's literally one click.

The problem I have is that adding an XX/XX/XXXX to the end of every topic would be the opposite of streamlining. It would make every topic title longer and the whole forum would become a mess of /s. Not only that, it's unclear if the date is the start or the end date so you still have to click into the topic to find the real date.

The closing thing I'm a little more in favour of, but the question is when do we close it? A month after is closes? A week after the last post? Just whenever we think it's dried up?

Clicking on the topic and reading the first post doesn't seem like a lot of work.
You can get directly to the first page by clicking the topic name.

Also, a small number of the contests there are active.  All the contests on the second page and the pages after it are over.

Which is all messy. It shouldn't be 'do this to find that' etc etc. It should be there. I don't see how dates or closures of threads aren't there, yet 'last post' is. It seems like a tangle, when it could all be layed out so nicely.

No, I have the mindset of doing things efficiently and of a high quality whilst keeping things free of mess and not making things harder than need be. All vital for Brickfilming.

It's not a case of having no patience.

Geez man, no need to get so defensive about our reasoning.

Seriously, it's two clicks of the mouse per thread: one to enter, and one to go back. We've been using this system since the forum opened in 2008, and probably since Brickfilms.com opened in 2001. You're asking the mods to patrol the Contest thread making sure that a contest is active, to add a date that is, in reality, unnecessary since it's already on the first post, and to mark each one as closed when it's done. This is far more effort on the part of a nine-man-one-woman crew of mods (some of whom aren't here as frequently) than it is for you to simply check a contest to see if it's active or not. Remember, they have other duties too.

TL;DR: If it ain't broke don't fix it. And it ain't broke.

EDIT: Retracted.

Last edited by mcoov (March 15, 2012 (11:29am))

One convention that was discussed previously was adding either an [ACTIVE] or [CLOSED] tag, which would be a bit more informative than a start date, in my opinion. While it was left up to the original poster of the thread to do so, I honestly wouldn't mind adding closed tags retrospectively in the interest of clearing things up.

What some of you who have been here for a long time don't seem to be considering is that new members/infrequent visitors are not as familiar with the states of various contests as you are. I don't think it would be so appalling to make things a bit more organized at a glance.

Lastly, phantom, that was quite unnecessary. The Updates and Feedback forum is here for exactly this sort of thing. Next time you feel compelled to berate someone for offering a suggestion (in a coherent, even-keeled fashion, no less), don't.