Please, don't close threads after 7 days

I am currently building experimental packages with updated drivers for the mwlwifi series of chips. I had been doing the announcements (and solving user's issues) at this thread: Pre-compiled updated mwlwifi drivers for stable releases, so people could just follow that thread, and get notified of new versions.

However, due to the 7-day inactivity limit, that thread was closed yesterday. I can open a new thread, but people that does not notice the change is not going to get the notifications, and all the links that point to that thread are going to point to a closed (and unmaintained) thread.

I think some threads should be allowed to stay open past the 7-day inactivity limit.

As far as i understood the forum post is only closed when you set it on [solved]. It depends on you if you set it on solved or not. So it depends on you if you set the option to close the forum or not.

Maybe there's a bug with the solved functionality? There's a link at the bottom of the thread to a different thread that was solved.

Nope I don't think so. I've seen multiple topics stating at the bottom 'this thread will close automatically in 7 days'.

@tmomas Could you chime in? Is there an issue this auto-closing feature is solving?

On that note, can some users be granted mod permissions manually? IMHO people who run their own threads in Community builds should all be mods, even if they don't log in every 24 hours and read required number of posts per day.

Honestly, no clue.
eduperez' topic does not have a posting that is marked as "Solved", and I don't remember having set that manually (I wouldn't have done that anyways as this topic does not qualify for this). The discourse forum software does log a lot - except where an autoclose does come from. :-/

The only thing I can image is that someone clicked the "solved" checkbox, then changed his mind and removed it again. Just checked: Removing the "solved" checkbox does not remove the autoclosure. IMHO a bug or at least a missing feature in Discourse.

Let's monitor this for some time. Should you stumble over further topics that have the closure message but no solution, please post it here.

You have to press yourself on your own forum on "this post solves the problem". Then the thread gets closed. You are the only one who can press this button to closed the thread thanks to someone else post.

I have done that just in this moment on this thread:

So this thread would be closed in 7 days because its not relevant any more.

Just noticed that it can easily happen that someone clicks on the solved button by accident.

The problem is that the solved status disappears, but the autoclosure is not removed. Sounds like a bug to me.

@tmomas
a "usability" bug :wink:
Some "do you want to set really this forum to solved and close it in 7 days" question after pressing the solved button would be fine.

Bug reported

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I could be wrong, but I am pretty sure I did not press the "solved" button in the thread in question.

I really would like to further investigate this, but Discourse is still missing logs for this.
It has been mentioned several times in the Discourse forum.

Maybe somebody else did that by accident. "Regular" users are able to mark things solved.

Do you mean that somebody else, besides the author is a post, can mark it as solved? I'm not sure that is a desirable feature...

Yes, as discussed here with @thess and @tmomas :

I am unclear if this is still considered an issue or not. I consider it a problem and see no real reason to close any posts..

And to answer the blue window to my right (which you do not see):
Revive this topic?
The last reply to this topic was over 1 year ago . Your reply will bump the topic to the top of its list and notify anyone previously involved in the conversation.

Are you sure you want to continue this old conversation?

YES

This 18 month old post is still open (and releavant), but another new post of mine now says it will close 10 days after the last reply. In this case I do not see it as an issue, but similar to eduprez's issue, some old posts with relevant content should be able to live. I had to start a new post to which I added Part 2, but now none of those with the knowledge are aware.

I think that this policy stifles good contribution opportunities for those with relevant knowledge. Further, it fragments related content making it more challenging for readers to see the entire picture.

FWIW, I worked for a company that developed CRM SW. Software like this is designed to show "performance", which is resolutions. Managers are metrics crazy and a lot of performance reporting is based upon how fast and how many cases are CLOSED. If a company uses this product to evaluate their Techs, then performance may be important, but here the ability to follow up on a 2 year old thread and include the original members is more relevant in this community. If we are not doing performance management, then closing posts is probably not required, indeed detrimental.

Thread are only closed when someone marks them as "solved", and I think that makes sense. In my case, the issue was that my thread was closed even if u had not marked it as "solved".

  • We don't have any performance metric regarding closing of topics.
    We do have statistics about "Accepted solutions", but honestly, I doubt that anyone checks this regularly (I don't). Those statistics do not play a role when closing topics.
  • Why are topics closed?
    Most of the times because they contain a solution to a problem. We want to keep topics usefull and with a high S/N ratio. We want to avoid that threads get off-topic, diluting the good content of a topic.
    I don't see a problem with "One question -> one accepted solution -> close topic".
    I do see a problem with "One question -> one solution -> more questions of a dozen different users and 3 dozen other users answering -> endless topic that nobody reads because it is hard to follow and takes too much time".
  • Can closed topics be re-opened?
    Yes, they can be re-opened upon request, e.g. if only on day 11 the OP recognizes that the problem occured again and isn't solved yet.
  • See the entire picture: Just reply as linked topic, or put a link to the old topic into the new one manually, and people reading topic #1 will notice the link to topic #2
  • Let people with relevant knowledge know of topic #2: just @-mention them, e.g. @RangerZ

@tmomas
As usual thank you for the clarification and education.
Not a social media user so these tools have bypassed me, until now!

I will not disagree with you on the issue with topics going in the wrong direction over time, so with these tools I think it becomes a workable solution.

Thanks again.

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