What's the downside of *not* automatically closing forum posts after 30 days?

ernstki · 2024-05-09T22:12:35.925Z

What is the actual downside of leaving forum posts open instead of locking them 30 days after the last response? I've never actually operated a popular public forum, so I just don't know.

I'm sure many of you are familiar with the DenverCoder9 problem. Similarly frustrating is the situation where I can help answer an old forum post definitively, thus preventing a bunch more half-answered posts from propagating off the original one, but the post is locked.

I'm working through an issue with TLS inspection at my workplace causing the "unable to get local issuer certificate" error when attempting to set up sync. I found ~5 forum posts where I could make a meaningful contribution (this one specifically)… but they're all locked.

I guess I could ask a forum admin in Meta to unlock the post in question, but that added friction is enough of a deterrent, I'm not sure many people will go to the effort. It's also a lot of friction to create a new forum post, referencing the five (then six, then seven, then eight) previous forum posts, in an attempt to create a definitive answer—but I'm willing to do that if you feel it's the right thing to do.

So again, back to the question of what's the downside of just not locking the posts in the first place?

Daeraxa · 2024-05-10T01:17:29.528Z

The main justification is really just to prevent stale information. For example we regularly saw people searching for X feature and tagging onto the end of an old thread some rant about how something so basic isn't available even though the feature itself had been developed and integrated into the application over a year ago and the thread was from 2 years before even that.

Likewise for support, instead of opening a new post with the support template and "please read" instructions many people would try to tag what they assumed to be a related issue to the end of something completely unrelated which then confused matters greatly for people trying to help.

Basically for features and support it is somewhat useful as it just prevents stale info. I have to admit I'm not sure if this could be looked at as something more granular if we are talking about meta, lounge, plugin categories etc. (or if this is already the case).

If you have useful info about a topic you are knowledgeable in then feel free to make a post about it anyway, we often tag these with the "tips and tricks" label to make them show up in the "wiki" header at the top.

dpoulton · 2024-05-10T15:59:47.469Z

From briefly peeking at the categories it looks like Support is the only one with a 30-day close after the last post. Features shows one year, Dev and Lounge show two years and the others do not appear to have a limit.

SMcCandlish · 2024-05-12T17:46:43.443Z

Daeraxa has the general answer, though it really only applies to specific types of forums (even specific types of threads within them): those in which information/claims/complaints/proposals/etc. age poorly.

Too many topical boards that are not tech/product support boards also engage in thread closure without any actual rationale for it, and it results in confusing duplicate threads and a lot of wasted effort re-re-re-discussing things. E.g., if you were running a board about sci-fi actors, there would be no sensible reason to close the thread about, say, Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequels, since it will never be incorrect that he played that role, and if you permit multiple discussion-forks over time, the same questions and interesting facts and complaints and praises and fan-fictional theories and etc. etc. (including sometimes false information that has already been debunked) are going to be re-posted multple times eventually, in distinct threads that don't have any clear relationship between them.

What a forum like this one really needs is "soft closure" that happens automatically after a long period of inactivity, and "hard closure" in which a moderator marks something as resolved. Anyone should be able to request un-closure of the former kind, e.g. if someone posted a problem report or a "how do I ..." question, which has not been resolved (or perhaps not ideally resolved), and someone else later has a useful answer to it.

ernstki · 2024-06-06T18:40:07.463Z

Thanks all, for your insights.

I think this is one of those cases where I just personally didn't have all the data, and every time I see a locked forum thread that (at least very nearly) solves my problem, it's confirming a preexisting bias that I have: locked forum threads are bad, because I have been inconvenienced. I knew in my gut that it wasn't that simple, though.

Sadly, it's also one of those cases where 20% of users are making 80% of the work, and so forum moderators (and open source project maintainers more generally) have to enact policies out of self-preservation, which impact the other users in sometimes-undesirable ways.

Keep fighting the good fight!

ernstki · 2024-06-06T18:47:02.969Z

Daeraxa:

The main justification is really just to prevent stale information. For example we regularly saw people searching for X feature and tagging onto the end of an old thread some rant about how something so basic isn't available even though the feature itself had been developed and integrated into the application over a year ago and the thread was from 2 years before even that.

I'm not that familiar with how Discourse works—how it really works—but it seems like what is wanting is the ability to add a prominent post summary to the top of a thread that's been resolved.

Then the "me too" and follow-on posts with new or amplifying details can proceed uninhibited, but without confusion to visitors seeing the thread for the first time, much later.

I get that's all nice and ideal, but until there's an ML model trained to do said top-line summary, it's almost assuredly too much to ask of the humans, volunteers all, and what with everyone all pulled in too many directions nowadays anyway.

laurent · 2024-06-06T19:11:23.779Z

A good reason for closing support requests in particular is to avoid posts like "I've got this problem too" with no extra information, even if the bug happened 2 years ago and has been fixed since then.

Then we need to ask the users to create a new support request where they can provide detailed information, specific to their issue. In the rare case where someone needs to reply to an old thread, they can always create a new post and refer the old, while providing more information. I don't feel we are losing much from closing posts, and it's definitely a win if it can encourage someone to create a new detailed support request instead of adding to an old post