[Poll] Closing Stale Topics

Could package feedback threads move into their own separate category?

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I’ll second that @mzjensen :+1:

If they close the tops with a bot, it could make exceptions for threads with a certain tag.

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I think it is worth mentioning that the posts still exist, just with a little padlock. For those who may not realize it. :slight_smile:

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What about new insights/ possible workflows regarding old problems (which couldn’t be solved before, but can be now) because of development of Dynamo and custom packages?

I also find 90 days quite a short timespan

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Agreed. I would at least make it longer.

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I think 90 days is pretty generous- I’d lean towards 60 or even 30 days
You can always create a new thread, and reference the old one

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I have some concerns that this may lead to increased duplication of topics, which is a FAR more difficult issue.

At the moment if you try searching “duplicate view” you get a list of 50+ topics. Which one of those is useful and leads the next person facing this problem to a solution? Who knows as half of them have solutions and the other can’t have multiple solutions so complete solutions are often not readily clear, or entirely exposed.

Right now we take the route of allowing users to ask a clarifying question in a way which expands on completeness of the solution we get better information to the 3rd person asking the question (another 5 years from now) faster. If we pivot to closing topics diverting users to start new topics we get into a situation where the ‘complete solution’ is now spread over 2 or more threads, making it harder for the nth person to get thing sorted out.

I’m fine moving which ever way the community wants, but please be sure we’re certain that the devil we know (a 5 year old post being resurfaced to ask for more info, and going un-responded) may be far worse than the alternative (increased fragmentation of the larger body of knowledge).

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Tbh i actually agree with this. I have no interest in any being locked and have never even thought if it as an issue but whatever the majority wants should be okay. I have seen, for example, @mzjensen and others add to old forum posts when they release custom nodes for things that can help on the topics. I think it’s nice that have this instead of them having to create a whole new post and things getting messy like Jacob is saying.

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Two reasons to leave them open

The changes in Dynamo cause old solutions to fail and sometimes require small tweaks like in this recent post that revived a two year old topic. Wouldn’t make sense creating a new topic for something like this.

Practical implementation of solutions on site should be encouraged. Closing posts would prevent such posts, a year or more later

However, moderators could be encouraged to proactively close topics that deserve closure in their opinion. Just my opinion

I must also confess that it feels nice when some really old post is revived. Good to know that your ancient contributions are still helping someone :slight_smile:

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I guess I’ll ask a silly question. I’m usually one that gets excited for change, but in this particular case, is there anything wrong with the way things are now?

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definitely pluses & minuses both way

The other consideration is that Dynamo has changed a fair bit, and I expect it will continue to evolve.
This means that a solution from 5 years ago will not necessarily work now, or there might be a better answer.
So explaining that there used to be a node called ‘GetKeys’ but no longer and levels didn’t exist/worked differently 5 years ago just complicates things

I’ve argued against closing for the same reason :slight_smile:

I actually sometimes really miss GetKeys

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It would be great if there was a way to deal with posts:

  • “How do I export data to Excel?” I’m guessing 50% of the posts on the forum ask this in one way or another…

  • “URGENT- I’ve got a deadline for my project/thesis/assignment- I haven’t attempted anything and just want someone to give me a solution”. I think the moderators should just delete these posts

Lol were getting a bit off topic but the thought of something like an autoban for anyone posting “URGENT” in all caps in a thread name has me laughing :joy:

1 Like

Hello,
we work on software whose cycle is one year, so I think 90 days is a bit short (Except if the topic has been marked solved).

If a topic is closed by a bot, a reopening request must be possible by a moderator (without the bot intervening again)

Above all, people should be encouraged to mark their post resolved rather than a simple like, it’s a shame that discourse does not allow you to add a signature (at least for moderators with the forum guide links).

2 Likes

What if it was a little “smarter” than just a duration, and it was more score based over a 90-120 day period? Combination of search hits, visits and/or replies could give a score and if the average score over the period is below a value its closed? This could potentially even close topics with more recent replies, but isn’t getting any traffic otherwise.

It has already been mentioned, but in general I would worry most about the additional duplication of posts.

Couple other suggestions:

  1. One other way would be to allow the OP to mark “Solution and Close” in addition to Solution.
  2. Allow the OP to “Reopen” the post a specific number of times like once or twice.
    A. Seems like this could help alleviate some of the burden from the moderators but give at least the OP
    some additional control over their post IF is hasn’t been marked as answered.
1 Like

I also think that 90 days may be a little short for auto-closing. Especially with regards to the concerns mentioned above.

I’m not usually one to argue for more effort, but what if new replies on locked threads were just auto-flagged for Mods? If I want to reply to an old topic I could do so (and would get some sort of warning that I’m reviving a dead thread) and my reply would then have to get accepted by a Mod as to whether it was a valid reason for reopening or should instead be a new topic.

Another option could be to automatically create a new thread and link to the locked one when making a response. It could lead to a lot of unnecessary duplicates but would at least retain all the information from the dead thread.

I agree that there are plenty of reasons for not fully locking old threads, but there are also times where people respond to 3 year old posts with no helpful information. Those are the instances that should be limited.

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I prefer it to be open, we can found a solutions for old problem, it give us a dynamic improvement.

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So there is lots of good, healthy discourse in this thread! Thank you all for brining your 2 cents, and rich thoughts to it :slight_smile:

For now, the poll will keep running. As it stands it’s pretty close to 50/50 and in that case, the status quo would remain.

There are some good suggestions for us to look into around a more nuanced way of doing this moving forward to that we can explore :raised_hands:

7 Likes