See my previous replies please 
There were two concerns provided for locking old threads:
Well, as closing is manual action anyway, in this case admin can indeed move post to a new topic instead. It is still a bit more involved as the new topic needs suitable subject and the correct category, while closing is just pressing a single button. So it does place extra burden on admins.
Moreover, the initial compaint was “new replies may add additional value” so admin would also need to evaluate whether the new post is a valid reply to the old topic that should be kept or needs to be split. And this requires good understanding of the original problem. You cannot demand it really.
We are back on square one. This needs to be implemented and you did not add link to the implementation. I do not know if auto-closing topic has configurable custom message, examples I see on other forums look rather generic, like
This topic was automatically closed after 26 hours. New replies are no longer allowed.
adding something like “please a start new topic describing your problem” could be enough.
But it hurts nobody except the poster her-/himself because she/he may never get an answer?! And talking about all those spammers they will do their evil anyway with or without forced closing.
So why do those few threads need forced closing?
If really a new topic arises in (one of those few!) old threads then a moderator/administrator can still split it off into a new thread (and because we are really talking about a few this should not impose a big workload on the moderators/administrators).
I’m sorry to say that but still I have not seen any real argument that would explain why threads need to be forced close after a certain period of time.
And that is exactly what is avoided by not being able to necro-post and thus being forced to start a new thread. I assume we do not want new people being lost and never get an answer because they thought that posting at the end of a years old thread that is vaguely connected to their question is a good idea. We want them to start a new post with a good title in the most appropriate section. And a little bit of helping to do that by cutting off one stray path will probably help.
Closing automatically posts is for moderators save a lot of work!
My free time is limited, that measure gives me more free time.
Right. “Keeping clean” as you say is obviously more important to mods here than being welcoming or friendly to n00bs and infrequents. Oh what a horrible thing it is here to be a necroposter!
I checked just now that the poster of >27 hours ago, whose post I was referring to in starting this thread, has not made another post anywhere in these forums since he was in effect scolded for his dastardly deed.
But you did check and see that this was a member which is already registered since the year 2010? And that he is not much active at all?
All those who participated in the old thread get notified of the new replies - and would have to take an action to turn the notifications off.
Not only that, but usually when a new user posts to an existing old thread, their problem is at best tangentially related and not the same problem. They tagged into the thread because they didn’t know that they should create a new topic for their issue.
I’ve been in technical forums myself where someone tagged in on a topic I created with their own unique problem - completely unrelated to my issue - and it caused massive confusion because we were both getting notifications for each others’ issues. (Note that this issue was not something that closing the topic would have solved, as both issues were active at the same time - but the issue is similar from a notifications standpoint).
Yes, spammers will “do their evil anyway” - but more people will see their activity and be able to flag it (all users can flag posts as spam) because they can’t pick threads that nobody’s watching.
We have 1.4 million comments in these forums (root posts + replies). That’s a lot of stuff to watch for staff.
Ultimately, it’s something that helps the staff manage the forums. It’s common in technical forums, and we picked a time period that is based on inactivity - 30 days of no activity in the topic. We felt that that was long enough to ensure that any existing discussion wrapped up, and the timer gets reset if someone creates a new reply in that time period.
The Akismet plugin requires a paid API key for non-personal use. We have looked at options to deal with cutting spammers off before they post as well - and that is a discussion that’s still ongoing. There may be GDPR issues around plugins that send data to a third party that need to be sorted out before we can implement something like that.
And that requires moderator action.
If someone really wants to reply to an old thread, as Malcolm pointed out, they can request it. A better solution is to start a new topic and reference the old one - something that’s as easy to do as adding a link to it.
Then the new poster isn’t generating notifications to the participants of the old thread, and can learn the benefits of starting their own topic instead of tagging onto one that has nothing really in common technically with their issue.
After all, if someone’s having a problem with the GUI starting up, a 10-year-old thread about X11R6 isn’t going to help them at all when they’re running Wayland, is it? Nor is a solution related to sysvinit going to help them with a systemd problem.
In spite of those who wish otherwise (and those individuals certainly exist), openSUSE changes quickly. Solutions from the past can be helpful as a starting point and a guide, but tagging in a brand new problem to a seemingly-related topic isn’t the best way to get help.
Lets discuss this on a real thread:
I created this thread two weeks ago. The actual problem exists since the end of 2023 (I kept just thinking: the next snapshot will fix it) and looking at the current situation the problem might still exist in a few months time (without much forum interaction).
Assuming I would find a solution lets say by the end of April I would have to contact forum staff to open the thread, wait until its ready and then post the solution.
I’m prepared to participate here in the forum within the range of my limited knowledge at any time I have available but I don’t want to “schedule” my interactions. To tell the truth: If I had been aware of the plans of “forced closing” I had not even placed that thread here.
However if those in charge of this forum believe it makes the forum more attractive if threads are “forced close” I do not really mind.
If my comments sound rude, please accept my apologies I’m no native English speaker. I just want to point out my concerns.
Assuming that there were no responses from the date you posted initially, that would be correct.
But there are responses, and each response extends the timer to 30 days. That 30 day timer is from the last reply, not from the date of topic creation.
Reopening topics is something that I believe would happen less frequently than having to deal with people necroposting, which causes more work to mitigate. It’s a balancing act.
Is the 30 day period the right number? We’ll see. If we find that it’s too short, we can adjust it. But we had to draw a line somewhere, and the consensus of the admins was that 30 days was a good number to work with, as it seems common in other technical Discourse forums.
It’s important to understand that it’s not a “forced” closing, but an “automatic” closing. (I understand what you’re trying to say, and the language barrier may be a factor here). But I think understanding that active threads aren’t going to be unceremoniously closed while an active discussion is taking place is really important.
That and there’s always the option - if you don’t want to wait for a member of staff to re-open a topic - to just post a follow-up topic saying “just wanted to let you know that this is still an issue for me” - which will likely cause someone to reopen the original topic.
I expect that to happen a small number of times - but not to be a regular occurrence. Indeed, on the forums that preceded these (the older vBulletin forums), mass thread closing happened very regularly, and nobody ever noticed it. (We would archive old versions’ threads to a section that was read-only). The only difference here is that we announced it - and it’s not just “old versions” (which the software doesn’t let us auto-close by tags, which is how we do things on Discourse), but any thread with no activity over 30 days in the technical forums.
Not at all - it’s good to hear the concerns (expressed respectfully) so we can address them.
I thoroughly disagree with your stance on this topic. Posts are not discarded by any means. Programs, bugs and solutions change. Where they do not, the old post is kept and can be read as it contains the solution or impossibility of the request/question.
To keep a thread open ad infinitum is useless as at some point the OP and the new poster might actually experience a different problem with the same symptom.
I never claimed they would.
This is not about reading posts. It is about being able to add (without having to contact a moderator/administrator) new information to a thread (I created) even if the last post in that thread happened more than nn days ago.
In this situation start a new topic and reference other relevant topics as required.
Methinks though art getting thyself a bit carried away with thyself. Shalt we so conduct ourselves towards thee, perhaps?
@DiabloRojo … AND, in the same respect, it is a great help to those of us who only have a limited amount of time to come in and try to help other openSUSE Users in the forums. Nothing is more frustrating than ploughing through a thread of 40-some-odd posts watching for technical info and clues only to find out it has been resurrected by someone without the same problem.
After a couple of those, I run out of time to perhaps help the one person I could have helped with a different issue.
I get what you and other mods are saying, and mostly agree, so please allow me to just input some of my experiences from working in support (B2B).
We had the luxury of primary support who would contact the user after a set amount of time and see if it could be closed or not. For anyone reading with no experience in support, this is expensive. And it is reasonable to be doing some balancing.
Can I ask what you are referring to with “technical” forums in this section, so we are on the same page? Are we talking about technical in nature, or specialist forums? Does this include or exclude the general end-user?
To you and me that is an clear distinction, but to the average user it is not. To most end-users a closed thread means it has been forced shut.
This adds a major hurdle, a motivated user might take that extra step, 90% won’t. That is a lot of potential users and future motivated users that will turn at the door.
One thing to consider, what you or I would consider a reasonable reason to unlock a thread (because we have familiarity with both problem solving and the tech) will be a complete mystery for most users of the forums.
This seems generally fair, I guess one thing to clarify, is this a technical forum or a general forum for OpenSUSE? Do we want administrators and developers only or also end-users and beginners?
Is it a compliment to bugzilla or the place where you initially go to ask a question you do not yet know if it is a bug or just your hardware/software having a Monday?
Also, be careful of survivor bias. You say it happened very rarely, but how often did users give up and walk away never to be heard from again?
This is my experience. The majority of users I’ve helped are happy to help others and share their success stories and problems, but it’s too much of an investment to do so. Very often did we get to hear that a problem have been common in an office for days, weeks or months before someone has the time and courage to open a support task. They would go to unbelievable lengths to avoid it because of the perceived difficulty.
All in all I think you guys are doing a good and difficult job, probably most if not all as volunteers. Cheers.
… except I would tend to go for about a 3 month expiry date, 90 days.
First, welcome! I see that this is your first post in our forums. 
I also have experience working in support (specifically, both in supporting users in forums and in backline support supporting volunteers providing customer support). I also spent years working in tech and working with technical support engineers of all levels of knowledge - so I understand the B2B support model very well.
We have two classifications of categories (to use the DIscourse term here): Technical support forums, aligned to things like install/boot/login (for example), and chit-chat forums, like - actually, this one, the Forums Feedback category.
The change we’re making only affects the support areas. That’s not to say we never close topics in the chit-chat areas, but it’s not an automatic thing that we’re configuring.
It’s a minority of cases at best, and opening a new discussion and referencing the original is very easy to do. Most of the users who come here have some technical skills - or are willing to learn.
A fair point, but we can only operate with the information we have. All of the staff here volunteer their time - I can tell you personally in my 14+ years of working these forums, as well as my nearly 18 years in the Novell and SUSE forums prior to coming over to the openSUSE forums, that the change aligns with what we have done previously (though that wasn’t announced in the prior forum system - we just archived old topics straight up).
I suspect that if we had not announced this configuration change, very few of our 50,000 registered users would even have noticed it, much less would have complained about it - because seeing it announced, they can forsee situations when they might possibly want to reply to a 10-year-old message in the 1.4 million messages we have in our database. Realistically, we rarely see it happen, and when it does, the reasons it does are not reasons that we should be supporting (for reasons previously explained).
Thank you - and yes, we are a completely volunteer team. Getting ready for this change has been a lengthy process (some of the staff have felt - myself included, if I’m honest - that it’s taken too long to get implemented). For me personally (and I’ll be the one implementing the changes on Sunday), it’s involved building multiple test environments from scratch and testing the change to make sure it (a) won’t require downtime, (b) that the process is solid, and (c) that it won’t have a serious impact on performance while being implemented.
I’ve done a fair amount of analysis on this - and while “time between last two responses” might be an interesting metric, it’s not part of the standard reports. But it’s not like we can’t look at the change in 2 months and see how many requests we’ve had to re-open closed topics, and if it’s higher than expected, we can adjust the time again.
As we all know, making things less restrictive is always an easier change than making them more restrictive. If we had started at 90 and decided later to drop to 30, there would also have been complaining. If we start at 30 and then change to 45 or 60, that’s “opening things up”, and generally isn’t something people complain about (there will always be one or two who see it as their mission in life to complain about any change at all, however.)
For the vast majority of users here, this change will not be noticed at all. We did expect some to complain - you can’t make a change in a community with 50,000 registered users and make everyone happy all the time.
+1 to Jim’s comments. I also have about 14 years experience working with these Forums in their various incarnations, and I work as a Network Engineer using Jira’s service desk for SLA customer support, so also quite familiar with these kinds of environments, as well as being involved in other technical forums as a regular user. These changes are not locked in stone and will be evaluated after a suitable period. I doubt most will even notice or care.
Ahh, okay, THAT certainly makes good sense to me.