Hello,
I am Siddharth Dubey. A web designer/developer from Pune, India.
I had a suggestion to make. There are a lot of posts in the Design requests forum for web designs, coding, banners etc.
When us designers post a bid in a thread, we expect some kind of reply from the author regarding the fact that whether he has selected a designer or still looking for people or not interested in the project anymore, basically anything which says the project has been closed or is still open. Also, a project cant be open for long periods of time without any replies. For example, this thread ( http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=743810 ) has been open for a month and there is still no reply from the author regarding the status of the project.
So, I was thinking if you guys could incorporate a system which showcases the project status (open or closed) next to a project name and automatically closes the project after a time set by the author or say a predefined time of 7days then it would really be helpful for us to know when can we expect a reply from the author or whether the project is still open for bids, somebody has been chosen or not or the project just timed out in which case the author may post again.
Because right now, i have projects in my subscription list which are equal to or more than a month old and there's still no reply from the author on the status.
This system will work for all job forums, whether design related or not
I would be happy if you would think about this problem from the bidders point of view and take some action on it.
Regards,
Siddharth Dubey

An interesting idea, but I'd suggest if you're waiting a month, that they aren't interested or have moved on. Setting a time limit on the "life" of the thread might stop those that would return later to either praise or complain about a transaction involving either the employer or the person that did (or didn't!) do the work they were hired for.
If enough members would like something like this, it would certainly be considered and looked into, however.

How about auto-unsubscribing a thread based on certain criteria, like after one month of first post/my post, one month of inactivity etc? Would this be easier to implement?
An interesting idea, but I'd suggest if you're waiting a month, that they aren't interested or have moved on. Setting a time limit on the "life" of the thread might stop those that would return later to either praise or complain about a transaction involving either the employer or the person that did (or didn't!) do the work they were hired for.
If enough members would like something like this, it would certainly be considered and looked into, however.

An interesting idea, but I'd suggest if you're waiting a month, that they aren't interested or have moved on. Setting a time limit on the "life" of the thread might stop those that would return later to either praise or complain about a transaction involving either the employer or the person that did (or didn't!) do the work they were hired for.
If enough members would like something like this, it would certainly be considered and looked into, however.
Well even if the posters have moved on or are not interested anymore, we should be notified about it so we know we should'nt expect anything from that thread..
Regarding setting a limit on the life of the thread, then instead of closing the post after the specified amount of days, a PM could be sent to the authors after the 'x' number of specified days to notify them that they should update the status or the thread will be closed.

How about auto-unsubscribing a thread based on certain criteria, like after one month of first post/my post, one month of inactivity etc? Would this be easier to implement?
this again does'nt help as we are still left in the dark about the status.. the main idea is for the the designers to be notified about the status of a project so they know what to expect..