Suggestion: Auto-Lock topics that are 3 months old.

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
1

I have a suggestion, if at all possible with this new forum.

I’ve noticed the administrators are having problems with reoccuring
messages from the past, because some “newbies” have responded
without checking the post-date, also confusing a lot of other users that
starts “chatting away” in a thread that is outdated completely, so…

How about making the forum auto-lock all topics that are older
than 3 Months old?

Just a thought…

2

We have been talking about this. No worries.

BgDM

3

I disagree with the auto-locking. There are many cases in which an old topic is brought back to life without bothering anyone (see “What does everyone look like”). In some other cases, the thread starter edits the first post with more info, to get the people to post again. It would just be better to:

  1. Mark old topics as OLD (something like [OLD] Thread title or just an icon that indicates it).
  2. Set a limit for “Similar threads” so threads older than a year or so don’t show up (that’s why old threads are being bumped more often, ever since the move to vBulletin).
4

How about locking topics that are 5 months old and only an admin, moderator, and the person who started the thread (if it’s a wip, the person might want to start again) can post, and then the thread can become accesible again.

But I think it’s not a very good idea. Old post being bumped doesn’t seem to be very much of a problem.

5

the general idea that this system would implement, if we did, is that the thread would not be locked, but would not appear in the general forum list.

one could link to the thread and click the link and view it and post to it, and it would appear normally in searches. And if then the post is added to it will be floated to the top where people will see it normally.

In general, don’t worry about the running of the forum. If you see a problem created by a user, point it out to one of us, but in general, we see the same problems and annoyances you do, and are working to get rid of them. all the work we did today to reformat the forum will go a long way to reducing the number of problems we see on a day to day basis.

6

first of all, thanks to the admins and mods, great job guys:)

would this be 3 months (or whatever) from the start post or three months since the last post?

I’ve had wips last longer than 3 months and have an active thread that long, if done improperly a feature like this could discourage people with long term projects from posting their work

7

To quote myself:

All the problems will be figured out. I am sure we will come up with some solution that will not hamper anyone’s threads. I definitely doubt we will do any locking, more likely just discourage the viewing.

Sam

8

Perhaps there could be a warning screen for old threads that might look like this:

“This thread this [X] month(s) old. Are you sure you want to submit this post?”

A. Yes
B. No

Just a thought.

9

So… if you have wip that you abandoned for say 6 months, it would be best not to bump that topic with new progress? Or just start a new thread?

10

what i dont get is why people post in threads from page 3+ or more
but i dont like the locking thing at 3 months mabye 6 would be good though

11

I would like to auto lock threads posted in the wrong forum :wink: