Suggestion: Lock Old Threads

[David Evans]

Not sure if this possible with this forum software but one thing that was damn annoying on you-know-where is seeing a 10-20 page thread from years ago being bumped back to the front page.

If possible can threads that have been inactive for a few months be locked? If people really want to make a sensible reasoned point about an old thread it's better to make a new one and link to the post in question.

 

[admin]

Hi Ginja, I'm not ignoring this thread - the software has an 'archive' function, I still need to explore the ins and outs of that. It would be too laborious to manually lock all old threads. I will look into that and work out what it does. I hope that it has the ability to lock threads after a specified period of time, e.g. six months or one year. I agree that as this forum ages we don't want people in 2018 bumping threads from 2014 (because they can link to them if need be). 

 

[admin]

Not sure if this possible with this forum software but one thing that was damn annoying on you-know-where is seeing a 10-20 page thread from years ago being bumped back to the front page.

If possible can threads that have been inactive for a few months be locked? If people really want to make a sensible reasoned point about an old thread it's better to make a new one and link to the post in question.

OK so......

I've set the system to automatically 'archive' posts which have had no replies for 90 days. When archived they are still visible on all forums, can still be read, still found by search etc..

But they cannot be replied to, and cannot be 'followed'. 

So if people want to discuss an archived thread they have start a new thread / link to it from an existing unarchived thread. 

Admin can override an archive (/unarchive a thread) where suitable. Archived threads will automatically have an 'Archived' prefix applied (like the one I'm using to mark 'Resolved').  

This will prevent bumping of old topics, and will also conserve system resources and keep this forum running nice and smoothly (archived threads are moved to new database tables, and consume 30% less system resources when loading). 

The system runs an update daily (middle of the night UK time) to achieve this. 

Thanks for the suggestion Ginja! 

Will marked as resolved and lock, any users with a similar query please start a new thread.