Why do you close threads?

[Endolith]

It's extremely annoying to do a search and find a thread related to your problem, only to find that after you push the "Reply" button the thread is locked and you can't reply to it. Why do you do this??

What benefit is there to locking threads and forcing users to re-create the same topic over and over again in different threads?

If you're going to keep locking them, the least you could do is remove the useless "Reply" button. (http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/16502/)

[snova]

It's extremely annoying to do a search and find a thread related to your problem, only to find that after you push the "Reply" button the thread is locked and you can't reply to it. Why do you do this??

If a thread is actually closed, the button will read differently, "Thread Closed". (You can still click on it, it just won't work except for moderators.)

Was it in the forum archive?

What benefit is there to locking threads and forcing users to re-create the same topic over and over again in different threads?

I'm honestly not certain why they make archives. I think it's for software upgrades...

[Joeb454]

I think the quick reply button is still there even if the thread is closed, which would be a vBulletin issue, not ours :)

And the archives were created because of a major upgrade to the forum software, which the staff felt would be an appropriate time to archive the older parts of the forum and start fresh.

Hope that helps :)

[Rocket2DMn]

In many forums on the internet threads are cloesd automatically after X amount of time, or even pruned entirely out of existence. We keep old threads around here for reference, and sometimes they contain useful information. However, because of Ubuntu's rapid release cycle, things tend to get outdated pretty quickly, and resurrecting old threads (otherwise known as necroposting) very rarely leads to a continuing discussion on the original problem. This is why we archived everything that predated Hardy. Also, it is generally considered poor forum behavior to necropost (this applies most everywhere on the internet).

It is almost always better to start a new thread specific to your problems where the OP drives the discussions, since they are the one with the problems. While there are many common types of problems, the root cause is often different, and when the solution is the same, the community helpers already know the answer and can explain it to the OP.

We manually close threads for a number of reasons, the following list is not all-inclusive:

The thread is old and was necroposted
The thread drifted from its original purpose
The thread is a duplicate
The thread is inappropriate for these forums


Hope that answers your question.

[Endolith]

If a thread is actually closed, the button will read differently, "Thread Closed".

Was it in the forum archive?

Yes. Is there a software difference between "closed" and "archived"? The archives are a place where users don't have permission to post, but the threads are not technically locked?

Could all the threads in the archives be closed so that the button changes?

And the archives were created because of a major upgrade to the forum software, which the staff felt would be an appropriate time to archive the older parts of the forum and start fresh.

Well, if it was a one-time thing, necessary because of upgrades, then I guess that's fine. I had the impression from threads I've participated in that they were continually archived after a set period of time.

In many forums on the internet threads are cloesd automatically after X amount of time, or even pruned entirely out of existence. We keep old threads around here for reference, and sometimes they contain useful information.

Yes. They should be kept around, and kept open.

However, because of Ubuntu's rapid release cycle, things tend to get outdated pretty quickly, and resurrecting old threads (otherwise known as necroposting) very rarely leads to a continuing discussion on the original problem.Why do you say that?

Also, it is generally considered poor forum behavior to necropost (this applies most everywhere on the internet). But why? Preventing people from replying to old threads about a topic just forces them to make duplicate threads about the same topic.

[snova]

Yes. Is there a software difference between "closed" and "archived"? The archives are a place where users don't have permission to post, but the threads are not technically locked?

I guess so.

Why do you say that?

But why? Preventing people from replying to old threads about a topic just forces them to make duplicate threads about the same topic.

Because the solution is not necessarily still valid.

Alternatively, why not? If the old thread is outdated or invalid, or never got a solution... just create a new one. Threads are cheap, after all.

Also, the people originally involved in the thread may not still be around.

One could argue it is a new topic.

[jdong]

The archive is primarily because we switched from subcategories back to big categories with tags, and there was no obvious way of migrating 4+GB of posts. Plenty of heads up was given that the area was to be closed read-only (on the order of months).

In general, replying to posts that old is discouraged as things tend to have changed significantly since then, and fewer people are likely to dig through 2 pages of posts to get to your follow-up.


If you need to reference an old (i.e. inactive for 2+ weeks) thread, I highly recommend starting a new one and linking to the old one for reference.