Locking old threads

[Kat Haylock]

The moderation team can breathe a big sigh of relief. We've finally (finally!) got a plugin on site to lock old threads. And it only took five short years!

From now on, threads that have been inactive for 365 days will be automatically locked. The period of inactivity will be based on the last reply, not the start date of the thread – so a thread from 2016 will still be open if there have been replies in the last year. For newbies on site: we lock old threads because it stops old, irrelevant information surfacing (for example, advice or links that relate to out of date legislation).

While I'm here, we've also put in a fix so you can view member profiles on mobile. It's not pretty, but it's functional (I hope!)

Kat

 

[Ian J]

Hurray

 

[TheWebDesignCompany]

Why wait for so long, ive accidentally posted on a few old threads before realising that they are not recent. This would be avoided if they were automatically locked after a couple of months of inactivity...

 

[Manasy]

ive accidentally posted on a few old threads before realising that they are not recent. This would be avoided if they were automatically locked after a couple of months of inactivity...

I did the same thing you did,post on threads that are too old threads are considered spammers.

 

[MikeJ]

Could you colour code posts based on their age? Have a pale yellow background for anything that's a week old, pale blue for a month, pale green for 6 months, etc? At least people would then have an idea of how old something is before replying.

This thread is a classic problem...

https://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/...usiness-not-viable.407742/page-3#post-3033955

Clinton's made a generous offer to a poster without realising the thread had died for a couple of weeks, and was then brought back by a new poster.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

I would go for 6 months

 

[zigojacko]

The irony being that today's comments were on a thread that is more than 365 days old... Hah.

 

[ctrlbrk]

Hi, I was looking around for a policy about necroposting on here.

Is this it then? It is okay to reply to a thread (obviously if you think there's value in it, not talking about spam, etc.) so long as it's open, i.e. less than a year old?

 

[fisicx]

If your post adds value then it's fine. For example, if there is new information about a legal issue or an update to an accounting thread you will be OK.

But it's often better to start a new thread and reference the old topic. You can't post a link but PM a moderator and they can add the link for you.

 

[ctrlbrk]

If your post adds value then it's fine. For example, if there is new information about a legal issue or an update to an accounting thread you will be OK.

But it's often better to start a new thread and reference the old topic. You can't post a link but PM a moderator and they can add the link for you.

Thanks fisicx - sounds like although there is no written rule about necroposting, it's frowned upon here. Did I understand correctly?

If so, is there a general cutoff time for when it's better to create a new thread?

 

[UKSBD]

Thanks fisicx - sounds like although there is no written rule about necroposting, it's frowned upon here. Did I understand correctly?

If so, is there a general cutoff time for when it's better to create a new thread?

The rules used to say, do not reply to threads where a post hasn't been made in 3 months, but the forum has recently changed hands and some of the rules have been relaxed a little.