Recently I have noticed a number of very old threads being reopened. I speculate that this may be a result of Artificial Intelligence (AI) assisted searches.
Rory
Necroposting
Necroposting
Apache OpenOffice 4.1.15 on Xubuntu 22.04.5 LTS
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MrProgrammer
- Moderator
- Posts: 5261
- Joined: Fri Jun 04, 2010 7:57 pm
- Location: Wisconsin, USA
Topic locking
I believe it helps the forum to lock topics appropriately. After a topic that I worked on has a clear solution and a couple of weeks have passed with no further interaction I will lock it. This prevents someone else from jumping on that topic to post about their own problem and making it difficult to offer it as a solution in the future. Necroposting is reduced.
Example:
Problem: User A wants to delete empty rows in a spreadsheet; Solution: Apply a filter to display only empty rows then delete those rows and remove the filter. Now we have a nice simple topic that I can link for user B who comes along also wanting to delete empty rows. That topic should be locked. If I don't lock it user C can post in the topic about wanting to delete empty columns. Solutions for that are going to be different and more complicated. The topic now has a muddle of discussion which makes it less useful for presenting as a solution for user B who wants to delete rows. If the topic had been locked user C would have to open their own topic, keeping their muddle out of the first one. Potentially a moderator can move that muddle to a new topic, but sometimes all the discussion becomes intertwined and it's just impossible to do that nicely.
I also believe it's good to lock ancient topics which deal with old software. New posts shouldn't go there, as much of that discussion may be obsolete, and any solutions may no longer be helpful for the topic's creator, who is probably long gone anyway. Someone using LibreOffice shouldn't post in a topic created at a time when people used OpenOffice 3.1 since the features now are quite different. "I can't find such-and-such menu." Well, yes, the menus in LibreOffice have changed and the old topic is just confusing to the new person. Any links to data which illustrated the problem are probably dead, making it difficult to determine if a new poster's situation is the same or not. Locking ancient topics also prevents "Thank you" posts which don't add anything to the discussion.
My view is that a topic belongs to the person who created it and its purpose is to help that person find a solution. No one should post in that topic unless they want to help the person who created the topic. If the person has a solution it should be locked. But many topics are not locked. It is wrong for someone else to post there about what they think is "the same" problem. I say:
• If you have the same problem use the same solution.
• If that solution doesn't help you then you have a different problem.
• If you have a different problem then you need your own topic.
• In either case you do not need to post in the topic belonging to the first person.
I realize that there are complications. Many people, perhaps even most people, do not mark topics as solved, so moderators do that for them based on their judgement. Personally, if I see what seems like a reasonable solution and no one had posted in the topic for a week I mark it as solved, though I don't lock it until some time has passed. Sometimes people add to their topic later with "but what about this other situation?". Then I wish I had locked the topic so they'd have to ask that in a new one.
Sometimes people do jump in on an old topic with a better solution than any which had previously been given. They can't do that if it's locked. They could create a new topic and link the old one though creating a link seems to be beyond the capabilities of most forum visitors. We might miss that information if the topic is locked. But this situation is quite infrequent and I think the benefits of locking topics appropriately outweigh that.
Example:
Problem: User A wants to delete empty rows in a spreadsheet; Solution: Apply a filter to display only empty rows then delete those rows and remove the filter. Now we have a nice simple topic that I can link for user B who comes along also wanting to delete empty rows. That topic should be locked. If I don't lock it user C can post in the topic about wanting to delete empty columns. Solutions for that are going to be different and more complicated. The topic now has a muddle of discussion which makes it less useful for presenting as a solution for user B who wants to delete rows. If the topic had been locked user C would have to open their own topic, keeping their muddle out of the first one. Potentially a moderator can move that muddle to a new topic, but sometimes all the discussion becomes intertwined and it's just impossible to do that nicely.
I also believe it's good to lock ancient topics which deal with old software. New posts shouldn't go there, as much of that discussion may be obsolete, and any solutions may no longer be helpful for the topic's creator, who is probably long gone anyway. Someone using LibreOffice shouldn't post in a topic created at a time when people used OpenOffice 3.1 since the features now are quite different. "I can't find such-and-such menu." Well, yes, the menus in LibreOffice have changed and the old topic is just confusing to the new person. Any links to data which illustrated the problem are probably dead, making it difficult to determine if a new poster's situation is the same or not. Locking ancient topics also prevents "Thank you" posts which don't add anything to the discussion.
My view is that a topic belongs to the person who created it and its purpose is to help that person find a solution. No one should post in that topic unless they want to help the person who created the topic. If the person has a solution it should be locked. But many topics are not locked. It is wrong for someone else to post there about what they think is "the same" problem. I say:
• If you have the same problem use the same solution.
• If that solution doesn't help you then you have a different problem.
• If you have a different problem then you need your own topic.
• In either case you do not need to post in the topic belonging to the first person.
I realize that there are complications. Many people, perhaps even most people, do not mark topics as solved, so moderators do that for them based on their judgement. Personally, if I see what seems like a reasonable solution and no one had posted in the topic for a week I mark it as solved, though I don't lock it until some time has passed. Sometimes people add to their topic later with "but what about this other situation?". Then I wish I had locked the topic so they'd have to ask that in a new one.
Sometimes people do jump in on an old topic with a better solution than any which had previously been given. They can't do that if it's locked. They could create a new topic and link the old one though creating a link seems to be beyond the capabilities of most forum visitors. We might miss that information if the topic is locked. But this situation is quite infrequent and I think the benefits of locking topics appropriately outweigh that.
I did post recently in a 2020 topic about batch compression of pictures. I saw that it was old but wanted to offer links to built-in MacOS tools which could help for that task. I've used them myself. I intend to lock that topic in a couple of weeks if there's no other discussion. I didn't expect this information to help the person who created the topic. The creator may not receive a notification (email changed) and even if they do, their problem probably isn't relevant four years later. My post was for others who might find the topic and need a solution for the situation the original person asked about which was MacOS environment. If I don't lock it, we may get posts from people who want to do batch compression on Windows. That solution could be different and will not help the person who created the topic since they use MacOS. If the topic is locked they can't ask their question there so may go on to discover the corresponding topic about batch compression in a Windows environment and find their solution.
Mr. Programmer
AOO 4.1.7 Build 9800, MacOS 13.7.5, iMac Intel. The locale for any menus or Calc formulas in my posts is English (USA).
AOO 4.1.7 Build 9800, MacOS 13.7.5, iMac Intel. The locale for any menus or Calc formulas in my posts is English (USA).
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Hagar Delest
- Moderator
- Posts: 33351
- Joined: Sun Oct 07, 2007 9:07 pm
- Location: France
Re: Necroposting
I admit that I had a rather different view than MrProgrammer. I was more prone to let discussions open. Sometimes there are good follow-ups even a long time after the last post. But well, that's quite rare.
You have indeed good points. It's just that users would not think about giving a reference to the topic they found related to their issue.
And I see that in many other forums, the topics are automatically locked after some time, like 30 days with no reply.
Maybe we should add a section in the survival guide about locked topics explaining why we lock them and to contact a moderator if there is additional information worth reopening a topic.
The only thing if I may is that I would not add the green check mark with dropped topics because if they are dropped, then they don't have a solution and showing a green check mark would be misleading (even if the dropped tag is in the title).
You have indeed good points. It's just that users would not think about giving a reference to the topic they found related to their issue.
And I see that in many other forums, the topics are automatically locked after some time, like 30 days with no reply.
Maybe we should add a section in the survival guide about locked topics explaining why we lock them and to contact a moderator if there is additional information worth reopening a topic.
The only thing if I may is that I would not add the green check mark with dropped topics because if they are dropped, then they don't have a solution and showing a green check mark would be misleading (even if the dropped tag is in the title).
LibreOffice 25.2 on Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE Faye) and 24.8 portable on Windows 11.