When should dormant threads be routinely closed?

[Proud to be erratic]

A posting in the last 24 hours made a subsidiary observation about an earlier thread on the topic was closed and a comment in response to that closing action suggested it was because of people accidentally posting on what might be seen as zombie threads.

That principle makes sense; but the timescale doesn't. The original post only dated back to Aug 24, so is not really a "zombie" thread. This isn't the first time I've looked back and found a recent thread is already closed. I know that if someone requests a thread be reopened that can be done with relatively little effort, but can't help feeling this has put the cart in front of the horse.

Perhaps @everydayupsanddowns and/or @Anna DUK could remind us of the arguments in favour of closing threads so quickly. Is this done automatically (which it feels like)? Could the 3 months be increased to, say, 6 months?

I wonder if the 3 month limit that seems to be automatically in place, is too short. Am I alone in thinking this?

 

[rebrascora]

I think 6 months would be a better option. I believe part of the reasoning was that spammers often targeted older posts with innocuous comments to get their feet under the table so to speak, before posting a link.
I am not sure how I would go about asking for a thread to be reopened. I assume it would need to be done via PM. Certainly most newbies would not have a clue how to do that and if I am correct, newbies are not allowed to PM until they have clocked up a certain number of posts anyway.... I may be wrong about that, but that used to be the case I think.

 

[Docb]

@Proud to be erratic - If I can step in. The reason for locking thread after a given time was to some extent down to me. I had noticed that we were getting a lot of spam attempts where keywords in the thread were attracting the spammer. Many of the threads attacked were quite old and I suggested to the admin team that automatically locking threads which have laid dormant for a period might be locked to cut down on the spam attempts. After some discussion, 3 months dormancy was settled on as a time for locking. I think I can say that the admin team have been reviewing this thinking that maybe that 3 months was too short.

I will leave @Anna DUK and @everydayupsanddowns to reply with the results of their deliberations. In the mean time what do you think would be a reasonable period? I can assure you that the spam attempts were reduced by the measure.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

In the mean time what do you think would be a reasonable period?

I think we're all guessing. Maybe try 6 months and see how that works out? It feels like it ought to work OK, but I'm guessing 5 months or 9 months would work just as well. 6 months is a nice round number.

 

[Anna DUK]

No problem folks, I can extend this to 6 months and review in some months on how effective/suitable this is (with regards to preventing spam and users returning to their threads to post). Our current 3-month window has been effective with regards to spam (barely any on historical threads), but appreciate this hasn't been suitable for users returning to update the thread.

The change to locking threads 6-months since the last post on a thread will be effective as of midnight tonight, however, threads which have already been closed in this time frame will remain locked I believe (i.e., 21 May '24 - 21 Aug '24). As always, if any threads would like to be re-opened we can do this very easily and in line with user guidelines 5.6 (5.6.1 - 5.6.5): http://forum.diabetes.org.uk/boards/threads/user-guidelines.75331/post-854277

Thank you @Proud to be erratic, @Bruce Stephens and @rebrascora for your feedback. And thank you @Docb for your support.

 

[Proud to be erratic]

In the mean time what do you think would be a reasonable period?

@Docb, thanks for your explanation. I had 6 months in mind as a more realistic duration. But I think my instinct was more about feeling uncomfortable that any thread was automatically closed without a deliberate human decision; that may be unrealistic on my part in this modern era of AI - which increasingly is taking over but too often as Artificial Stupidity.

AI may be brilliant for doing searches within a truly massive amount of data, but even that fails when the data is distorted from the outset - and I have the NHS firmly in mind; despite informing them that I moved some 16 months ago I'm still being asked to verify my new address (note verify I really have moved, rather than confirming my identity for personal data security reasons). Never mind different NHS Trusts holding different data sets about me. Anyway, apologies my digression.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

But I think my instinct was more about feeling uncomfortable that any thread was automatically closed without a deliberate human decision;

I'd guess there are just too many new threads (most of which will eventually go dormant) to allow for human decision-making for all of them. This isn't AI anyway, it's (I assume) just a mechanical "close a thread when the last posting is over 6 months old".

(I guess in a different context it might be worth having some way to find threads that are at risk of being closed, so people can post to any they find interesting. In this case I think it's much more helpful just to allow such threads to be closed automatically.)

 

[Anna DUK]

That's right @Bruce Stephens, it's not AI but a 'simple' add-on created by a developer with 'special coding' to sweep through the system.

I don't think the developer of this add-on has created the functionality for us to receive alerts on threads which near closing, I can check this however.

With an average of 475 new threads per month, we wouldn't be able to manually close every thread (that's a lot of resource).

 

[Bruce Stephens]

I don't think the developer of this add-on has created the functionality for us to receive alerts on threads which near closing, I can check this however.

Doubt it's worth it. Threads can apparently be reopened readily enough in the rare cases where that makes sense.

 

[silentsquirrel]

Would it be possible as the thread is automatically closed to add a message automatically to the effect that it has been closed because it has been dormant for x months, but if you wish it to be reopened please contact an administrator, giving details of how to do this. Many may be very occasional posters who will be unaware of this possibility.

 

[Anna DUK]

Would it be possible as the thread is automatically closed to add a message automatically to the effect that it has been closed because it has been dormant for x months, but if you wish it to be reopened please contact an administrator, giving details of how to do this. Many may be very occasional posters who will be unaware of this possibility.

This is something we (admin and moderators) have recently discussed. I did have a look into this and found that this can be added but that it does this by adding another post to the thread. Sounds ideal, but it actually isn't because the threads that end up in the sweep, also then end up in the 'latest posts' list and therefore the 'genuine' latest posts risk getting missed by the community.

I have seen a way that the message at the bottom can be changed. This is the one that reads: 'Not open for further replies.', but I haven't found a way to separate this between those threads that have been automatically closed by the system, and those which have been closed manually by admin or moderators (for moderating reasons). As I'm typing, I'm probably overthinking it by categorising the two and that actually a generic message to contact admin/moderators to review re-opening this thread would probably suffice.

 

[Anna DUK]

This is something we (admin and moderators) have recently discussed. I did have a look into this and found that this can be added but that it does this by adding another post to the thread. Sounds ideal, but it actually isn't because the threads that end up in the sweep, also then end up in the 'latest posts' list and therefore the 'genuine' latest posts risk getting missed by the community.

I have seen a way that the message at the bottom can be changed. This is the one that reads: 'Not open for further replies.', but I haven't found a way to separate this between those threads that have been automatically closed by the system, and those which have been closed manually by admin or moderators (for moderating reasons). As I'm typing, I'm probably overthinking it by categorising the two and that actually a generic message to contact admin/moderators to review re-opening this thread would probably suffice.

Managed to update the closed thread message! 😎

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Managed to update the closed thread message! 😎

View attachment 32597

Great! thanks @Anna DUK - that’s really helpful 🙂