Threads to never lock.

JamesR404

Beta member
Messages
4
Location
London
I think right now threads lock after a year orso. But, what if we just leave them open. For ever ^^

The thing is, people often use google to get to some post, and then they might have something to contribute to it. Even if it's years later, the internet never forgets.

Wouldn't it be nice if relevant stuff can still be added to the posts?
 
Sorry but that wont happen. If a member forgets or wants to add something to a topic of theirs, even a year later they know to contact a member of the staff to open it back up. 99% of the time, the person forgets they even had a thread and starts a new one any ways.

There is no reason to leave every thread open. People can get to their posts, via their profile. They shouldn't be going through Google when there are options built right into the site.

Leaving every thread open is just an invitation to have people bring it back up out of no where for no good reason. Posting "Hey thanks for the info" is not adding anything to a thread and it is not relevant to the thread.

Like stated, if a member wants one of their threads open, they just have to ask. We are more than glad to comply.
 
If someone has something else to contribute, they can quote the original thread or the relevant post in a new thread and link back to it. it would work out just as well.

We set up the autolock due to people dredging up very old threads (sometimes innocently). Tech changes very quickly, so a thread that is a year old can be horribly out of date. people seldom look at the posting date, so these threads caused no small amount of havoc when they were pulled up.
 
OK, I get it, it does add a hurdle for people to contribute.

... and indead, I don't mean a "thanks for the info" type post, but really something useful.

Good point Trotter on the technology change, dredging up an old post might cause more havoc than it's worth.

Well, I guess you can close this thread ;)
 
If member feel that they have some thing useful to contribute to a thread, then they can ask a mod to re-open it. About the only time that i do see this of any use has been about the long developments of some computer games (especially MMORPGs) where it might be months between one announcement and another.
 
As a user it can be annoying too. As you could be checking new posts to find that someone else bumped a topic from several years ago cause they have a similar issue. So they see the topic via a Search Engine and stop by and say "I have the same problem" but nothing else. So now you have a topic from several years ago bumped up for no good reason without any information. That is just as frustrating as a user as it is for a staff member. 99.9% of the topics that were left open were brought back for this reason, which is exactly why we choose to have them close automatically.

There is very few times that a topic is brought back for good reason. Like stated above, if a person wants to bring it back for a good reason we will. But 99% of the time it isnt for a good reason.
 
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