Is there possibly a second constraint that we can adjust? I would say that threads should be closed only if they are old AND huge. If it was a short thread which received no traction it should be okay to bump it.
For example, why shouldn‘t I be able to bump this thread?
I don't think this is really necessary (I only recall a couple of really old threads surfacing each month) and it causes its own issues. e.g. If there's a way to easily quote posts from locked threads then I haven't found it yet, which means I've had to resort to manually converting the post back to markup and hand-tagging it with the correct username, thread and post IDs. Presuming there isn't an easy way to quote locked threads, this makes it very hard to do the right thing by making a new thread that summarises the old one.
Imho there isn't a real problem, and I definitely prefer old threads being resurrected over new threads that are created without looking for previous discussions about the same topic.
Especially in the evolution-category, there may be ideas that have been out of scope when the discussion started, and which profit from other proposals that have been implemented in the meantime.
In many cases, creating a new thread might be the better option - but a warning should be enough to nudge people to do so.
I think the real “problem” has been when people bump threads that existed before the forums—thus sending email notifications to people who might not have even created an account on the forums at all.
Seeing as it has been well over a year now since the forums were created, I think we should do a one-off auto-lock of any thread whose last post occurred prior to the forums existing.
I don’t see it as a problem to solve. Specially since Discourse clearly shows ‘1 year later’ which is pretty useful.
And if it’s something I really don’t care anymore I just unwatch the thread.
If it got not traction that is a clear indication that it probably should not be bumped later specially when the landscape has already changed.
That is completely incorrect. The flood of information is immense since we have the forums. Nobody can handle every possible topic or does share interest in every idea. I can be certain that you don‘t follow every possible thread in the forums. Locking down small threads that didn‘t catch the momentum and forcing copy pasting for revival of the threads later would be simply unnecessary.
I‘m fine with lockig down huge AND old threads though.
This would become a yearly chore that nobody is going to want to do.
I guess what I really want is some form of policy on what to do with old treads. So far the loose goosy policy is, don’t bump old threads otherwise somebody might come and tell you not to bump it and lock it. That’s is a waste of time. If the policy is to not bump old threads then why not make that policy automatic? If that is not the policy then why are we enforcing it manually by telling people every time to make a new thread?
To be clear, all I wanted to say is that the "crteria" for locking down threads should not be only TIME but include things like message count or other things.
Hope I don‘t sound offensive in any of my replies because I‘m a little bit in rush in the moment.
Sometimes I know a thread exists but still cannot find it, because I cannot find the right search terms to trick Discourse into showing me what I was looking for.
That means if I find a locked thread I am interested in, and a separate continuation exists, there is a reasonable chance I won’t find it and will start a concurrent new one. That is not helpful for anyone.
I think one of the following two brainstormed patterns of etiquette could be established instead of autolocking, and would do a better job:
Strategy 1: Any given topic should have a single, centralized thread. Any duplicates that spring up out of oversight should be redirected to the central thread as soon as the redundancy is discovered. Users who no longer care about a topic should be encouraged to put the Watching/Tracking/Normal/Muted switch to good use, (and/or set up e‐mail filtering rules).
Strategy 2: Whenever someone wants a thread to be dead, they “close” the thread with a request that any new poster create a new thread including a summary, and then post a link to the new thread at the original thread. Once that link is there, the thread can be manually locked, and older participants will no longer be bothered.
Because locking threads seems to make it impossible to easily quote posts from them. If you have a technical solution to that significant issue, or I'm mistaken here, then automatically locking old threads seems unnecessary but fine.
Any response can be linked. If this was a problem then none of the threads should ever be locked.
For example here I am linked to a response I did a thread that is currently locked.
They can be linked but I don't see a reasonable way to quote part of a post. And no, I'm not saying that no thread should ever be locked, I'm saying that there are both benefits and costs to locking a thread and I don't think that the benefit of auto-locking all threads outweighs the cost.
They can be linked but I don't see a reasonable way to quote part of a post.
Copy-and-paste (which I have used here) seems like a reasonable workaround for this conundrum. If not having Discourse’s quote button is the biggest technical downside to auto-locking, then I think there aren’t too many downsides. As for patterns of etiquette, they have to be enforced by a forum bully that intervenes to tell the newbie that they’re doing it wrong; that is much less welcoming than encountering a small technical roadblock such as a locked thread.
I've raised the issue with Discourse, although I wouldn't expect a quick turnaround.
I don't find it reasonable at all, because it doesn't link to the original thread/post, or give credit to the person who posted it, or allow people to expand the quote inline, or preserve any formatting/code blocks, etc. To quote a post from a locked thread properly you have to reconstruct the markup by hand, and track down the thread and post ID from the link URL. I think it's ridiculous to call people bullies for pointing out to someone that they've bumped an old thread, also.
If the inability to quote isn't a bug, then it'll be just another of many examples of Discourse's weird design decisions.
I didn't call anyone out, but merely pointed out that, as benign as the intention may be, forum policing is pretty much a form of bullying. It says "hey newbie, respect our authority", and does so generally by calling someone out publicly. A technical limitation (in this case thread-locking) may very well be a gentler way to enforce what is intended to be a social norm: no one gets called out, no one feels attacked.
Sure, if there is a technical solution to the quoting issue that means I never have to reconstruct a quote by hand then that changes the calculus for me. But that's not any definition of bullying that I've ever heard of, and I disagree with the characterisation. If gently pointing out that a thread is old is considered bullying then I suppose saying that a question about UIKit programming is more suitable for the Apple development forums must also be bullying, and disagreeing with someone's opinion in a proposal review must be something even worse.
The Discourse folks have informed me that there's already a convenient way to start a thread from a closed topic, at least if you don't need to quote specific text: if you click on the timestamp in the top right of a message, there's a "+ New Topic" option which will start writing a post with a link back to that specific reply.
That is so undiscoverable that I don't think it really changes the calculus of locking old threads, since we can hardly expect new users to know about it.
