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Threads should be automatically locked after 30 days of inactivity

I happens every now and then. Somone dredges up a years old post and askes a question sometimes only remotly related to the origonal thread, often it's more like "I am having this problem too but the fix did not work".

 

Today a thread from 2005 was resurected on the LabView forum. Smiley Frustrated

 

Seroulsly 30 days of inactivity shuld be plenty, you can always reference the old thread of you have a simmilar question that was not answerd in the origonal thread.

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=== Engineer Ambiguously ===
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Message 1 of 6
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While a good idea, it probably needs to be fine tuned.

 

Maybe it should only apply to new users below a certain amount of posts. Seasoned users might want to update an old thread, for example if a better solution has been developed or to add a comment that the problem no longer occurs in newer LabVIEW versions, etc.

 

(Part of the problem stems from the search requirement before posting. Given some odd terms, it might present some really old threads and the user might just append to a search result, not realizing that the search engine here is still really bad.)

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Good ideas, both. 

 

Perhaps as an interim test: Present a cautionary/warning message to any user who tries to post to an old thread. Old might be defined as > 3 months on therads not marked solved and > 1 month for threads with marked solutions.  The message could say something like what many of us post: "This thread is really old (or marked as solved). Unless you have a very good reason for appending to this thread, please start a new thread with your question."  Try this for a few months and see what happens.

 

Lynn

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I'm not a fan of the blocking idea because sometimes users (even new ones) have legitimate content to add to a specific thread (anything from a new way to repro a bug to a workaround they found to a question on a nugget). I think Lynn's suggestion is better, and could apply to all users. Of course, it should only take into account the time of the last reply in the thread, not when the thread actually started.


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Message 4 of 6
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@tst wrote:

I'm not a fan of the blocking idea because sometimes users (even new ones) have legitimate content to add to a specific thread (anything from a new way to repro a bug to a workaround they found to a question on a nugget). ...


That's exactly my point of view:  I was not able to find the post that I am actually having in mind but I remember a post in the Machine Vision forum by Eric (aka BlueCheese) that contained a useful (although about 3 years old piece of information at that time) to an issue that I had.  I kudoed his post and added an answer that the information is still up to date.

If that thread was closed at that time there would have been no chance to mark it as "still useful information".

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@altenbach wrote:

... or to add a comment that the problem no longer occurs in newer LabVIEW versions, etc.

 


When we release new versions and service packs I try to find all the relevant forum threads about bugs that are fixed by the new release and add a comment indicating the version it is fixed. Often the first thing users find when they are researching a bug is a forum thread, so it is helpful to be able to add a note indicating whether or not the bug has been fixed in a later version. For that reason I am opposed to locking the threads, but I do agree with the general comment about reviving old and stale threads with unrelated questions being a frustration.

 

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