Which is only six months old, and it is closed. This topic is still extremely relevant! There was nothing at the end of the topic that hinted at it closing. It just ended. I wanted to contribute!
Isn’t closing topics really bad practice? For one, there’s no point in it. It doesn’t do anything helpful for the board. But more importantly, it prevents people from posting, totally cutting off a would-be relevant and interesting reply. Why would a forum admin want that?
I have seen and run many forums in my day, and the thing that peeves me the most is when I’m looking for support or additional information or looking to contribute to a currently-relevant topic, and the thread was closed. It’s especially terrible when it’s technical support and there wasn’t enough information given in the thread, but I digress.
I’m just saying-- I see it in a lot of places, but I never see a benefit to closing topics that didn’t become any kind of drama or spam-- but I often see a huge problem with their closing.
That particular thread auto-locked due to no activity within 4 weeks of that topic.
When a thread get’s no activity (IE: No posts) within 4 weeks or so, it is closed.
If a thread breaks the rules or get’s derailed from it’s original topic, it is closed by a mod. (You will know when a mod closes it)
For a thread to be closed, it is one of those two reasons. You can start another thread on the same topic and continue the discussion from there if you wish buddy!
Again, people get bored of a topic, it’s not a mods fault if no one wishes to continue the discussion even further. Forums you run or have seen compared to ADISC Forums are different. The mods here run their site differently compared to what you have seen.
My guess is that (going to pretend I never saw the link to answer this) to have room to breath around for new discussions. It does not prevent people from posting if they don’t post anything within 4 weeks, it most likely just means they are done with that particular topic or grew bored of it basically.
Also, some thread are closed because thy are running at the same time another similar thread has been posted. That’s not the case in the above situation, but something to be mindful of when you start a thread.
One thing that you could do when continuing a closed thread in a new one is to start with a link to the old one. Unfortunately commenters on the old thread will loose their subscription…
It’s to prevent necromancy. As Snivy noted threads autolock after one month without a response because if there hasn’t been any responses in that much time the discussion has run it’s course and it’s time to start a new one.
What if you possess the Necromonicon like I do. Then you can open closed threads, call the devil, even…oh damn. Got to go. There’s another demon in the bedroom. Oh wait: false alarm. It’s just my wife.
This, along with preventing low-quality necros of a thread, is pretty much why. Long threads, from what I’ve seen, can kill discussion because people don’t want to read all the posts before replying.
But it didn’t run its course. And it’s not an archive of complete information! Like I said, that topic is still highly relevant and the questions the posters were asking haven’t been fully answered yet. The topic shouldn’t have been closed!
That’s only relevant for certain kinds of posts. Most posts are relevant for years. For example, I would want to keep my Introduction post open as long as I’m on this board-- I will always be interested in replies from anyone interested in being my friend; and there’s always content people will speak about in reply to many that I won’t be receiving in PMs.
Updated - - -
“Necro-ing” a post is only a problem with some kinds of posts. Not with something like Minecraft development news where we’re still waiting for answers. We have a similar post about ABUniverse’s status, and we all agree that that one shouldn’t be dead just because it’s been more than four weeks, right? We’re still waiting for replies with information!
Going to butt in this for a second, not every topic/thread is going to be majorly popular. It could died out the next day and focus on another thread that is super popular. Compare to these threads for example.
November 23rd 2014: Marka made a thread called “I love cookies” and it gets maybe 10 posts
November 25th 2014: HogansHeroes made a thread called “I won the lottery” and this grabs everyone’s attention pretty much
It’s a general focal point of things, whether it’s a good discussion that should be looked at, not all the time is it going to be looked at.
If questions get left unanswered, best to start a new thread, make a blog, or look for members that have experience in this kind of stuff. Sorry, but that is just how life rolls~
They see me rollin, they hatin~
Answer this question, look at the date: 15-Sep-2014 and the last post: 23-Sep-2014
It’s pretty much done and over with anyway, I don’t see any reason for that discussion to keep going anyway.
Like I said, if you want information, ask a member, make a blog, or start a thread. I’m sure nobody wants members to bump few month old threads and be completely lost on this entire topic, it’ll cause some string of confusion. A 4 week no activity box is plenty of time for members to join in and post but if no one responds, then it closes, thus saving the discussion for another time when it comes up.
On the informational note: Microsoft and Mojang conversation is pretty much a done deal anyway, it was a spit around September anyway and the majority of questions were already answered, some questions were left unanswered but maybe there were reasons to all of this. For what reasons, I don’t know: Click here for a second
look at the results…latest is November, pretty much a done deal and over with, people have moved on anyway. The newest rant that is going on is whether or not if Trevor is Cary Grant.
More focused on the threads itself? It’s what I said at the beginning of the posts, gives breathing room for other discussions around the website and leaving the old threads to rot because the have done run their course.
The entire post wasn’t just about the Microsoft/Minecraft acquirement. There was a lot of other stuff being talked about, too. But whatever. If need be, I’ll just start new topics.
I mean, it’s not as if I’m replying to stuff that was only said in the previous topic. You know, I could just start a new topic in argument to a post from the old topic. That would TOTALLY make sense! “Oh, but it’s an old topic and they wouldn’t reply!” I don’t care. I just wanted to contribute to the idea. You know, clear some stuff up for future archive readers. You gotta understand that message boards are not instant messages-- they are archives. And the many people who read on the internet are looking for archived information. (By “archived” I don’t mean “closed”, though. I mean things that are not necessarily active, budding social media.) I’ve said many times that I’ve been on countless boards looking for technical or supportive information, only to come across closed boards that didn’t give the information I needed.
If somebody is posting a thread that says “Hi, how are you”, and the next one says “Hey, I’m doing great”, then by all means, close it in four weeks. But for everything else, well… I’m just saying-- closing topics SOUNDS like a good idea in concept, but almost all the arguments I’ve seen given for doing so are not actually solving anything, and instead create several potential problems.
While I agree with most of your post, this point is a poor argument.
All members can post here - a recent join date isn’t a good argument against someone’s suggestion or opinion. For that matter, a join date tells you nothing about their familiarity with the forum. I actually was somewhat familiar with ADISC’s history and ideas proposed in the past when I started posting. (One of my first posts was in admin stuff.)
