"Close" old threads?

This comment was made in my thread about enhancing the Forum page:

Originally Posted by TenTenths Or just automatically lock threads six months or a year after the last reply.

I'd suggest that the idea has merit. What are your thoughts?
six months?
one year?
Longer or shorter?

Being a member for that long, I'm surprised you haven't seen several of this thread.
(Almost) Everyone seems to agree - except jeremy.

Guess who wins ....

1 year.

Once in a blue moon a necro'd thread actually re-opens an interesting discussion. There was one in the Programming section about Armstrong numbers which took on a life of its own and was thoroughly enjoyable and it would have been a real shame if that discussion hadn't happened purely because of some arbitrary age limit on threads.

IMO Jeremy is right in not wanting to lock them.

I think it makes less sense in the context of technical support threads though, and in any case there's nothing to stop a new thread referencing an old one where relevant to the topic.

Personally, I agree with ferrari; I've noticed a number of old threads being re-opened that didn't need to be. I think as said above, if someone feels that an old thread is related to their problem, there's no reason they can't provide a link to it in a new thread. It would mean less confusion for members and mod's alike, and less work for the mod's. I don't think this should apply to the non-technical forum though.

While I *think* I can understand why Jeremy has reservations about doing it, I think the benefits probably outweighs the cons.

I don't know exactly how long it should be until the thread is locked, but maybe a year is probably a good number.

Just my anyway.

I have the impression that these "lock old thread" suggestions tend to pop up after necroposts by spambots (most recently in here, although the spambot post is now deleted, I think it said "I agree with you" or something meaningless like that). Assuming spambots post randomly wherever they can, the effect of locking threads would be to redistribute their posts to more recent threads. I think this is worse, not better.

For cases where it's humans making inappropriate necroposts, the same people (who are apparently reluctant to make new threads for some reason) might post to current threads instead of old ones, i.e., thread hijacking instead of necroposting. Again, I'm not sure this is better.

By the way, I've seen a few times, where someone comes and gives a good answer to an old unresolved thread. Making a new thread with a reference would not help so much in that case, because that points from answer to question, but there is no pointer from question to answer. I admit this is a pretty rare case though.

In a previous thread, one guy suggested autolocking after three years.

"Six months to a year" is IMHO much too early. But I won't complain about three years.

i don't see anything wrong with the existing arrangement, i.e. you get warned before posting to a very-old thread.
if anything, that feature could be expanded a little bit to make it harder to overcome for bots/spammers/clueless_noobs.

Every once in a while someone does post to an old thread some new or correct information. I think that anyone looking up a problem needs to watch the dates and versions for answers.

This may be the 1000th post on this subject.

I'd be surprised if it was only the 1000th post
Just wanted to toss it out there.

Perhaps, instead of closing old threads, they could be tagged as [OLD THREAD], similar to [Solved]. Or color code the subject area, if thats even possible.

Originally Posted by ChuangTzu Perhaps, instead of closing old threads, they could be tagged as [OLD THREAD], similar to [Solved]. Or color code the subject area, if thats even possible.

Ooh...I like both those ideas...

I also like ChuangTzu's suggestion.

I was going to suggest a dialog popping up saying something like "This thread has been inactive for [unit time]. Are you sure you wish to continue?"

Originally Posted by scasey I'd be surprised if it was only the 1000th post Just wanted to toss it out there.

You should have posted it to one of those old threads instead of making yet another thread about it

Originally Posted by ChuangTzu Perhaps, instead of closing old threads, they could be tagged as [OLD THREAD], similar to [Solved]. Or color code the subject area, if thats even possible.

That might be helpful indeed. In a similar sort of theme of making the necroposting more visible, I once posted a GreaseMonkey script which puts visual gaps between posts proportional to the time elapsed between them. (By the way, notice how that thread was also started in response to a spambot? EDIT: got mixed up, it was this other old thread)