Possible auto-lock of old threads? (Stop necro posts)

I feel like there has been a massive amount of necro'd threads on the forums lately.

In my opinion the forums should have a feature that would automatically lock threads that haven't been commented on for a year or longer (and possibly get re-opened if the OP posts on it).

There are a few reasons why I think this would be a good idea:
- The techniques, issues and news talked about in old threads have most likely gotten irrelevant.
- People who do necropost usually have nothing of value to add to a conversation and instead ask questions or give answers to something that has been aswered multiple times. Of course there are exceptions, but very rarely.
- Necroposts simply clutter the forums.

Again, this is just my opinion.

 

I suspect this is a result of the "other" forums. I have noticed that google results are now showing results that take you to that version, and they appear to still show the "suggested threads".

If you catch one, go ahead a report it. I agree that most of the time it is better to just lock them, but there is probably a some cases where the could be valid. (In theory).

 

I agree that depreciated tech discussions ought to be labeled as such or otherwise disabled in some way.

Not all necro posts are bad though. There are some situations where a person asks a question on how to achieve a certain effect that isn't answered for a year or two until someone else comes along who is trying to achieve the same effect and figures out how to do it properly.

If there was an auto-lock feature, I'd really like to see an effort put into archiving useful posts and threads and then listing them somewhere in a sticky or even a "Tutorials" type sub-forum. Modding forums do this pretty much all the time. When someone figures out a cool new efficient way of doing something or even just explains a simple process for a noob, that gets placed there and is accessible for others who are searching for similar issues.

Just my two cents.

 

Another solution might be to to provide a warning when someone replies/posts if the last activity in the thread is past a certain date threshold (like two years or whatever).

 

Been suggested when forum was updated to Xenforo. People linked necro plugins, settings and stuff in the thread but nothing ever happened, just like with the paid community features

 

Have to say I disagree with locking old threads. I can't tell you how many times I've searched for issues on these forums, only to find the relevant issue in a thread from years ago, which is still an ongoing problem. Just because a thread is old doesn't mean it is out of date, or not worth posting on.

I've experienced thread locking on other forums and can't stand it. Always seems so arbitrary to close down a discussion because the thread has "timed out".

Necro posts can be annoying, but I'd rather put up with them rather than face a more restricted help forum.

 

I strongly prefer this solution instead of simply locking the old threads.

 

Don't forget there are some devs who have no choice but to stick with older versions of Unity, too.

 

Yeah, this would be fantastic.

I don't suppose Lithium had this functionality either?

 

I think auto-lock is bad, but there should be some visual warning indicating that a thread is very old.

 

Maybe people should just be smarter. Seems like every action and feature is around dealing with incredible stupidity.

 

You underestimate the stupidity of people.

 

I wouldn't expect most forums to support this natively. It's a good candidate for a plugin. Like this one.

https://xenforo.com/community/resources/tpu-show-warning-when-bumping-old-threads.3913/

Unfortunately I've noticed Unity doesn't attract people who are used to working with forums and accidents do happen.

 

I'm stupid too, just there's stupid and then there's stupid that causes evolutionary harm. I mean if we consider a thousand years of modern entitled living, I doubt anyone would progress much further than being able to cry. I mean people already cry if say no for whatever reason.

 

you can't teach stupid, it just happens.

 

You can't fix it either.

 

So your thoughts are... If we stop catering to exceptionally stupid people, maybe there will be less of them?

Interesting.

 

No. We'll just go broke.