topic Re: SUGGESTION: Automatically lock dormant threads in Community Site Feedback

SUGGESTION: Automatically lock dormant threads

bobpullen — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 14:43:17 GMT

Probably moaned about this before, but I see quite a lot of this:

That's a thread that's been bumped over seven years after it was raised!

I see two obvious solutions to this:

Develop something to automatically lock threads that have been dormant for 'X' amount of days. I could be mistaken but I don't think Lithium offers this functionality out of the box?
Implement something to limit the output of search suggestions when posting i.e. only return suggested threads that are newer than 'X' days.

Thoughts?

Re: SUGGESTION: Automatically lock dormant threads

Browni — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 14:55:34 GMT

I saw this yesterday

Maybe it should be bigger

Re: SUGGESTION: Automatically lock dormant threads

MauriceC — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 14:54:54 GMT

I'll add my support @bobpullen I've reported several such incidents to the Mods recently. Uneccessary work for the Mods + plus confusion to the reader until the date check is made

Option 1 is preferred.

Option 2 could get in the way of legitimate searches for similar historical information? But if option 1 is operational the data will need to be cut'n'paste to a new post.

Re: SUGGESTION: Automatically lock dormant threads

MauriceC — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 14:58:13 GMT

@Browni wrote:

I saw this yesterday [Image cut]

Maybe it should be bigger

I doubt that would work unless it could be configured to deliver a mild shock via the keyboard for every character entered

Re: SUGGESTION: Automatically lock dormant threads

jaread83 — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 16:01:53 GMT

Great suggestion and it has my support... only issue is that it's not possible for me to develop something that would automatically lock a thread after a certain amount of time has passed. To lock a thread would require a physical action by a user to do this - and even then.. the user needs to have permission to lock a thread.

Option 2 is also not possible as we have no access to the search results.

I could have the API give me a date of the last reply to a topic and have the editor completely removed from the HTML on the reply page... but this isn't a great solution either.

The only thing I could do is submit an idea to the Lithium ideas board and hope it gets voted enough for consideration.

Re: SUGGESTION: Automatically lock dormant threads

jaread83 — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 16:21:41 GMT

The Lithium ideas board already has this idea which was posted 5 years ago. It has got a lot of votes too but the idea has not been implemented as far as I can see... though it is marked as something for consideration. I have submitted a new idea, referencing the other one, to revive it.

Re: SUGGESTION: Automatically lock dormant threads

jelv — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 16:26:45 GMT

@Browni wrote:

I saw this yesterday

Maybe it should be bigger

I've just tried starting a reply to an old topic and the screen automatically scrolled to the area to compose the message with the yellow message off the top of the screen so it may be that people are not seeing it. Is the scrolling something you are doing @jaread83? Can you stop it?

Re: SUGGESTION: Automatically lock dormant threads

jaread83 — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 16:29:16 GMT

I hadn't thought of the auto scroll. This is something in the system and I have added a bit more to it to ensure the focus is scrolled to the editor... I may need to change it so that the warning is not obscured.
Thanks for pointing that out @jelv, that's a good point. I will add this to our backlog.

Re: SUGGESTION: Automatically lock dormant threads

jelv — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 16:30:17 GMT

Given that even if people do read the message they are inherently lazy could you put a start a new topic (in the current board) link in the message?

Re: SUGGESTION: Automatically lock dormant threads

rongtw — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 16:31:21 GMT

@jelv is it possible the warning is getting stopped with pop up blocker or add blocker ?

Re: SUGGESTION: Automatically lock dormant threads

jelv — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 16:34:23 GMT

@jaread83I had it at the back of my mind that during the Lithium development we complained that the reply box wasn't in focus and you did something about it.

@rongtw - no it is not blocked, if I scroll back up the screen the warning is there.

Re: SUGGESTION: Automatically lock dormant threads

jelv — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 16:38:11 GMT

@jaread83 Could you fix it so that when the warning pops up the scrolling is totally suppressed - i.e. make it more painful to reply to an old topic but not stop it entirely?

Re: SUGGESTION: Automatically lock dormant threads

billnotben — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 17:34:15 GMT

Sometimes though it must make sense.

You do a search and find your problem or question has already been asked. But no answer is there so you simply ask what happened what was the result.

Or dare I say you find a thread where plusnet has said they are going to do something promise something and.............

But I can't disagree that overall resurrecting threads over a certain age is generally pointless. Maybe as suggested the warning needs to be made more "in your face" unmissable.

Re: SUGGESTION: Automatically lock dormant threads

bobpullen — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 20:13:18 GMT

@Browni, thanks for pointing that out, I'd not realised there was a warning.

@MauriceC wrote:

Option 1 is preferred.

Agreed.

Option 2 could get in the way of legitimate searches for similar historical information?

Not an issue if the cut off is limited to the new post suggestions. May not catch all instances though.

@jaread83 wrote:
Great suggestion and it has my support... only issue is that it's not possible for me to develop something that would automatically lock a thread after a certain amount of time has passed.

An interesting solution touted here, although it's a bit of a hack

@jaread83 wrote:
The Lithium ideas board already has this idea which was posted 5 years ago. It has got a lot of votes too but the idea has not been implemented as far as I can see... though it is marked as something for consideration. I have submitted a new idea, referencing the other one, to revive it.

Thanks. Upvoted.

Re: SUGGESTION: Automatically lock dormant threads

Mav — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 20:30:10 GMT

As a mod do try to move such posts to their own new thread with a reference to the thread they originally posted in but these do slip through during busy periods.

Would it be possible to have a clickable warning box similar to when clicking on Cancel when replying? Perhaps three options given being:

Return to Board (so they could see if a more recent thread is available)

Start a New Thread (which automatically opens a new thread page perhaps with the title already completed)

Continue

Just a thought.

Re: SUGGESTION: Automatically lock dormant threads

jelv — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 22:11:55 GMT

I really don't like the idea of totally blocking replying to old threads because as billnotben pointed out there are times when it is appropriate. What you would end up with is people starting new topics without any of the back history in the previous topic and the moderators having to merge the topics.

Re: SUGGESTION: Automatically lock dormant threads

jaread83 — Fri, 27 Oct 2017 08:32:41 GMT

@bobpullen, I saw that thread yesterday when I was looking into this. I already got the functionality for checking when the last reply was (as can be seen on the reply page). So it wouldn't be hard to do something like this

Basically we're just hiding the Reply buttons and putting a message at the top of the thread that says "This thread is now archived and closed to new comments. If you have a question please post a new topic."

We received no negative feedback following its introduction. We have had the auto-archive set at 6 months to be conversative but I think 3 months for a vibrant support community would be fine.

The only issue is that there is no visual queue to show that a thread has been 'locked' other than the absence of the reply buttons and a message at the top of the page.

I will have a think about this and look at giving this a trial, possibly only hide the reply buttons for normal forum users and let staff, mods, admins, superusers, established users and veterans be able to access the reply buttons (as they know not to post unless is absolutely needed.. I trust those groups of users at least to not post unless absolutely needed).

Re: SUGGESTION: Automatically lock dormant threads

Oldjim — Fri, 27 Oct 2017 10:09:00 GMT

I am saying nowt

Re: SUGGESTION: Automatically lock dormant threads

jaread83 — Mon, 30 Oct 2017 09:15:26 GMT

While talking with some of the community of Lithium developers, there is a way to set all threads to read only (locked) if they go over a certain amount of days of inactivity (I would set this to a very long number like 1-2 years old though). So its entirely possible and is done in a part of the code I havent looked into yet which will do some actions when a page is initialised. I will have a chat with Louisa and see if she would be happy to try this out. If we implement this, it should at least put a stop to new users doing the [search, click results, hit reply, ignore the warning box] flow that has been happening which is ressurecting old threads.

We can try this out for a while and if it causes issues, then we can revert it back.

Re: SUGGESTION: Automatically lock dormant threads

MauriceC — Mon, 30 Oct 2017 10:37:30 GMT

Thanks for going the extra mile and doing the 'digging' @jaread83.

Not always a simple decision to Lock any particular thread - some are destined to be ongoing. Having said that a great deal of problem based threads do become 'stale' as time passes and service upgrades made.

E.g. this one from this morning? Speedy action by the Mods has now locked this thread, but it's a time consuming activity.

EDIT: And here's a good example from this morning of a valid use of an old thread!