Mods closing threads here are more irritating than thread hijacking and zombies

English Forums Feedback
41

Well… forum netiquette seems to be a complex thing…

As I was the original poster, I thought it’s a kind of respect and politeness first to search for similar issues, to save time for everyone.
And as I found the IMHO bloody similar 2018 post, which was unanswered since then, I added my issue and findings. Thought a second if I better should open a new thread and mention the old one. But independent of Wayland and X as said I jugded it at probably same root cause. For me there are sometimes some instabilities with screen resolutions in Linux, for years. Not only with KVM switches, like for the 2018 poster, not only for my monitor with two input sources in use - I also had a very similar issue with a rdp/vnc invoked sessions on a VM with Redhat, when starting them from my company Win10 laptop (FullHD) with an external 2K monitor: Depending on which monitor I start the remote session will set the max. resolution… Means if started on FHD and moved to the other monitor, FHD will stay as max. Starting in 2K, fine with 2K. Doing the same with WinWhatever VMs will change resolution dynamically, if window is moved from one monitor to the other.
However, I’ve asked a question in my post, and sorry that I’ve missed the forum rule not to reply too late to ex. threads: IMHO it would have been more friendly to give a poster a hint why and not just killing without a comment… just my 5 cents

42

Probably a comment would have been helpful, I agree. Must have been an oversight, because the Mods normally will say something like:

… old thread, please start a new one …

43

This scenario will be a thing of the past when auto-close kicks in. (Many other Linux Forums do this already.)

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44

You are correct that searching is generally a good idea - and a follow-up post referencing what you found would probably be useful.

These kinds of situations are outliers, generally - and it is fairly typical to administer systems in a way that covers the majority use case rather than a small number of edge cases.

In Discourse, when another topic is referenced, the original thread should (as I recall) get a notation that there was a follow-up or related topic as well, so others who find that old topic can see where it’s referenced.

For example, looking for the topic you referenced seems to be this one:

Now, once I post this reply, you should see it noted in that old thread.

(After posting - editing to add screenshot and further comments):

image
image831×198 14.8 KB

And clicking the link in that page pulls you back over here to the “new” discussion.

So you get the continuity with the old thread without the bother of notifying those participants in the old thread of the new information. It’s unlikely that after 6 years, they’re still looking for an answer, but if they are, they’ll see that the thread has been referenced in a related discussion.

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45

What all this hullabaloo has missed so far is that in that particular “zombie” thread I was prohibited from publicly answering the question asked. I had, and still have, a response to offer, but no place on-topic to offer it publicly that I could expect the question’s writer to see except by happenstance. That is the other reason my opinion of forced thread closings differs from the mods’.

I evaluate close thread to negative action. On average it takes 10 positive interactions to overcome each negative. Most people remember slights more effectively than favors, especially in unfamiliar environments. I don’t see that other forums routinely autoclose as justification for negative behavior as a matter of standard policy by an institution that wants its users to “have a lot of fun”. A reminder comment should be more than adequate action for overworked volunteer mods to take instead of the easier alternative - no action at all.

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46

So? Start a topic with suitable title and reference the post or topic concerned.

2 Likes
47

@Fraser_Bell likes:

48

The topic is not closed, Felix. You are free to respond to it right now if you choose to.

The 30 day timer, again, is from the last response, not from the first post’s timestamp.

Thus, after the change takes place on Sunday, the topic you’re concerned about will still be open to receive responses (assuming you decided to respond to it before the thread auto_close changes are implemented), and once you provide your response, the 30 day timer will start then. And if @michael_of responds to you, that pushes the timer out to 30 days from when his response is, and so on.

If you wait until after Sunday, then, as @deano_ferrari said, you start a new topic with a suitable and appropriate title, reference the old discussion, tag the user you want to respond to if you think they still need an answer to their 6-year-old question (which apparently is the case), and continue the conversation.

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49

Of course, at this point, I am wondering if this topic has run its course.

50

If the thread that triggered my OP here didn’t have a lock on it, I would have had no trigger to write the OP here. The lock is still on it, and it has no reply button visible in 15.5’s Chromium.

51

@mrmazda Please provide a link to the topic in question

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52

Is it possible to exclude specific topic from being auto-closed e.g. on request from the topic starter?

53

@hendersj should be able to answer that question for you.

54

I only found one topic that fit the criteria described, and I linked to it here. If that isn’t it, then point us at it and we’ll unlock it for you so you can reply to @michael_of in it.

Or you can just DM him, since you know now (and it seems you knew when you started this thread) that he was still interested in your answer.

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55

The auto-close functionality doesn’t work that way. It also would get very confusing to have different standards within the same category.

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56

Does it apply to all categories? While English part is rather active there are some other languages where there may be no reposnse for a long time.

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57

30 days seems a good number across the board - we had no feedback from any of the mods that they felt that time was too short, including in the non-English sections.

If there are needs to adjust once we’ve implemented, we can - but I would also think that if it’s normal for responses to take more than 30 days, then perhaps something else should be done to address the timeliness of responses, and that increasing the amount of time for any response is probably not addressing the underlying issue of “not enough people to answer the questions posed”.

58

@mrmazda, as requested, the thread you requested to be re-opened has been, https://forums.opensuse.org/t/screen-changing-resolution-without-input-by-me/130470 post away, if no replies after the 17th for 30 days it will (should) auto close…

59

You really believe that closing topics will help with getting more people to answer?

60

That’s not the problem this configuration change is intended to solve. If anything, this configuration change will highlight the issue further, or will help us see that it’s not an issue.

As I have said numerous times, if we find that the interval is inappropriate, we can change it. But none of the moderators in any of the tech areas have expressed concern about this change being an issue for community engagement.

If there are questions that are going unanswered for > 30 days or longer, that’s an issue bigger than just “we didn’t allow someone to answer an old thread” - because after 30 days, it’s fairly common for users to abandon the question anyways, or to look elsewhere for an answer.

At some point, those threads are effectively abandoned the majority of the time. The times that an answer would come in, (a) we can reopen it upon request, or (b) the user who wants to reply can follow up in a new topic that references the old one.

The other change that we’re making, (which, BTW, we’re making specifically because of your excellent feedback on the value of marking a solution in a topic being useful to those who help - something we had not previously considered) includes a filter option that will let you find those questions that have gone unanswered more easily as users start to leverage that functionality.

So that will help with identifying those questions that have no solution so you and others who do help out can find them more easily and prevent them from going for so long without an answer.

The change is coming on Sunday. If we find the interval is not long enough after we’ve had some time to observe the effects, then we’ll change it. Nobody in the staff has expressed any misgivings about the time period we’ve selected, and while it’s likely there will be some outliers, out of our 3,700 messages per month that we receive on average, it will very likely be a small fraction of 1% that will be affected by it.

And if we’re wrong, we’ll change it. It’s not a permanent change.