"This topic will automatically close in 3 months."

Well,… SURPRISE! Another new feature just appears without warning:

The following now appears at the bottom of SOME topic threads:
:clock1: “This topic will automatically close in 3 months.”

Example:
Problem importing modified dynamic components

ADD: jody switched this feature on.
Here is a FAQ thread of at Discourse Meta that explains a bit about the feature:


I had thought we had gotten past this with this discussion:
Is there a time limit to edit a post?
… in which Tommy said:


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Does this mean that we won’t be able to come back, add to, develop or edit topics and posts? I don’t like this. What about @Cotty’s and others’s galleries? Are they planning on closing them after 3 months as well? Not a good strategy in my opinion.

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Thanks for mentioning it and bring up your concerns. I enabled the 90 day retirement to deal with some grave digging which has come up in the past, the hope being to keep topics from getting too old. The gallery is a great example of a place where resurrection might not be so bad so I’m pulling that back off, but will be keeping the retirement policy in place, only removing it for any other categories similar to the “long living” Gallery. Definitely chime in with any additional concerns so we can dial in the whole process as cleanly as possible.

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Forgive me for asking, but what is the concern about “grave digging” old topics? I worked for a computer company for 27 years, and we had a forum-like internal system in place during most of that time. Surprisingly often people found it useful to add new replies to topics that had been created literally 10 or 20 years earlier. It was fascinating (and helpful) to be able to read about a given activity over such time scales.

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I think that the issue we have been try to address is the number of “zombie” posts that have been popping up. There have been a number of instances where users have found an old thread, and tacked on a comment or asked a question about the original post, even though the original topic was two or more years old!

Ideally, new questions would be asked in new topics… If needed, the old topic can be linked to.

What we are trying to do is keep the main feed relevant and current. When a topic from three years ago about a problem with the 2015 installer pops up, it affects the feed.

Of course, we are trying this out and do not claim to know all the answers! Thus the reason for Jody asking for input! This forum belongs to all of us, so please let us know what you think!

I do have the ability to do the retirement based on the last post to the topic, so… if I post next week it resets the countdown for another 90 days. This should keep the Gallery going, or similar long threaded topics while allowing topics which have become less relevant to retire normally. That feels like a decent middle ground. Thoughts?

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I see your point here.

Sorry if this is garbage but, my cat keeps setting on the key board:-)

I agree with you but, over the years I have seen a remarkable loss of
knowledge base by Google , Trimble in the fact there appears to be no
effort at all to capture in many of the very worth while posting info
above and beyond what is in the manuals and never shows up in the user
manuals. In stead the same answer keeps being repeated. Any thoughts on
how you do not " retire" that type of info??

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Here is an example of a 11 month thread resurrection that is proper:

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Glad I could be used as a good example :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: First post on the forum, and the thought did cross my mind that I maybe shouldn’t be posting to such an old thread. I don’t often post to fora, and I guess I’m not yet forum-wise enough to know to do this…[quote=“TheOnlyAaron, post:5, topic:40562”]
Ideally, new questions would be asked in new topics… If needed, the old topic can be linked to.
[/quote]
Maybe old “retired” threads could have a “start-new-thread-with-link-to-this-thread” link at the bottom in lieu of a reply button?

David

What is the “official” definition of a “zombie post” ?

But SU2015 is still supported. Users with older hardware or older OSes, are still having to install these older SketchUp versions, so for them these topics, are still relevant.

And what is “the feed” ? anyway? An RSS feed ?

Or do you just mean the “Latest” list ? If so, then I’d expect some other means to filter THAT LIST, rather than choke off every topic thread on the system.

I think YOU GUYS should have been in front of this, and the ones to start this topic, and a discussion, rather than just surprising us and initiating a change without prior discussion or warning.

Again,… we had a discussion and a resolution in this topic:
Is there a time limit to edit a post?

This Meta category, and all the Developer categories, as well as the Dynamic Components category are also ones where the topics are generally “timeless”.

Most of the repeated resurrections are occurring with technical and licensing issues.
(I had asked that licensing get it’s own category where people could go to find answers, and then you could better control these threads.)

The problem isn’t the resurrecting of threads,… instead the main problem is new users not searching the forum, and posting the same issues again and again in NEW topic threads (even though the issue has been solved in existing threads.)

I wish new users would be sent to a search form landing page, that might talk them through a search for their issue, and present them with relevant “hits”. (It appears that the dynamic “your post in similar to…” right pane feature is just being ignored, and is never used. The user just posts the repeat issue anyway.

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David, they used to, but it was “made harder to find” by the Discourse core team (for what reason I do not know.)

You now have to click the post’s elapsed time (at the top right of every post,) OR the Link (chain icon) button (at the bottom of the post) in order to bring up a menu that has the “+ Topic” button which used to be labeled “Reply as Linked Topic”.

Hiding this feature, means it likely will not get used. (We brought this up in a thread here in this category, but got “no joy” from our efforts.)

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Also, for what it’s worth, I decided to go ahead and post to the old thread to avoid the flip side of this coin: starting a new thread only to get a response of “that topic was already covered, dummy”.

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This same issue of closing threads dates back to the Google Group days. It was annoying then, and closing threads would be annoying now. Pre-Google Groups we had non-closing threads I believe. People were happier.

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i.e. near to no gain in seldom cases but annoyance for all…

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I’m curious how often we see old posts resurrected and why we see it as a pain, alternatively if they DO lock how often do we see that being a problem. This is a change to past behavior yes, but are we being bothered by change for changes sake or is it truly going to cause problems in the forum?

Speaking for myself only, old posts pop up at least once/week, perhaps more often. And my frustration comes if the post precedes my involvement in the Forum, in which case it pops up at the original (unread) post, instead of jumping to what is actually new. Big time suck? No. But still annoying if the post has more than a screenful (or two) of replies.

I have a suggestion. Why don’t we create a poll and announce voting? I do believe users of this community, both old and new, have the right to choose what is comfortable for them.

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I would rather see a feature where the solution mark causes an automatic 30 day countdown clock to “retirement.” (These are the “single user issue” threads.)

I am totally against the arbitrary locking of ALL threads of all kinds. It ignores the fact that there are “timeless” discussion threads, not just “single user issue / question” threads.

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This highlights the need to educate users to identify posts to be attributed as the solution, because most users don’t bother to do that. I suspect that “solution” posts are identified by SU Team Members or Sages in greater numbers than the OP.

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