Posting Message Idea

[rpwong (Russ)]

@Bruce_Osborne

if it goes without a comment for a month or so, it will be locked automatically?

Good stuff, Bruce. This option would be great.

[Bruce_Osborne]

@rpwong

Good stuff, Bruce

I just searched on Rich’s find. This forum seems to thrive on team work.

[mstormi (Markus Storm)]

@Bruce_Osborne

Yes both scenarios are supported via timed close on a topic.

From Discourse Feature Questions - feature - Discourse Meta

Yes @moderators can use “Set Topic Timer” from the wrench menu, but we would need to individually do so for every thread. That’s applicable to topics were’re involved in but it’s not feasible in general).
OTOH, if someone finds/continues an old or ancient thread, well that’s the amount of common sense any user has to bring. They probably learn quickly when noone answers.

[Bruce_Osborne]

@mstormi

we would need to individually do so for every thread

More searching says that is incorrect. sigh

Question:

I see there are some auto close features based on topic/message size. Can I automatically close topics after a duration? For example, after n days have elapsed with no reply, could the thread be closed?

Answer:

Yes, you can do this at the category level:

• go to the settings for the category, go to the settings tab, then “auto close topic hours”

Or at the topic level:

• click the wrench on the right, “set topic timer”, and choose from the many options available

from Time based auto close topics - support - Discourse Meta

[mstormi (Markus Storm)]

@Bruce_Osborne

we would need to individually do so for every thread

More searching says that is incorrect. sigh

Nope. Sigh
I wrote:

@mstormi

Yes @moderators can use “Set Topic Timer” from the wrench menu, but we would need to individually do so for every thread.

If you tell me how to access Category settings I can do, but I have not found that option.
Admin can, moderators likely cannot.

[Bruce_Osborne]

@mstormi

Admin can, moderators likely cannot.

Fair enough.
Who is the Admin here?

[BrutalBirdie (Elias)]

@Bruce_Osborne

https://community.openhab.org/about

[Bruce_Osborne]

Thank you.

[Kai (Kai Kreuzer)]

@Bruce_Osborne

Who is the Admin here?

I am. What shall I do?

[BrutalBirdie (Elias)]

Good morning @Kai

TL;DR
The idea here was to auto-close topics after 6 Weeks, was proposed, of inactivity since the thread hijacking is getting out of hand.

Time based auto close topics

[Kai (Kai Kreuzer)]

Ok, I have set auto-closure after last post to 1000 hours for all categories.
Let’s see if that leads to a crashing forum, because it will have to close 95% of our topics tonight ;-).

[Bruce_Osborne]

Thanks. You realize you could have spread out the initial load, right?
Are you going to warn DigitalDan or just let it crash?

[Kai (Kai Kreuzer)]

I doubt that there will be any issue!

[Bruce_Osborne]

Thank you again.

[Bruce_Osborne]

The change looks like it is only for new threads. That is a start
Is there any way to have somebody review and lock the ancient threads? Perhaps some automated script or semi-automated reporting?

[Bruce_Osborne]

Somebody just commented over a 2 year old thread!

No automatic refresh of time

I’ve been using openhab for a little over a week now, installed on a pi4 and it has been working really well. Got SmartThings interfaced, works much better than expected, InfluxDB+Grafana, Weather, MQTT was todays task and it works really well, once I got past all the confusing examples and read the current documentation. But in my testing of MQTT I found that my “default.sitemap” is being updated/auto-refreshed CORRECTLY in the edge, chrome browsers and openhab android app. However, I create…

Any other ideas @kai?

[BrutalBirdie (Elias)]

Hey @Bruce_Osborne maybe you didn’t notice but the “auto close after x time” is active.
It does not close old topics since it’s one month+- from the activation of the feature to be auto-closed.

And I think it’s good like that, since people need to adjust.
The best we can do now is communicate.
Let me just quote @rpwong since I can agree with him very much.

@rpwong

I think it’s always going to be difficult for new users to decide whether or not they should start fresh or continue a post, because they lack the knowledge/experience to know if their issues are the same or different from what they’re reading. All they can do is interpret what others have written and take a guess. So you end up with some people jumping onto threads with different problems, and others starting new threads right next to other ongoing discussions about the exact same thing.

I’m not immune to this. I don’t have your technical skills, so I often can’t tell if the problem I’m trying to solve is directly related to a post I’m reading, and I sometimes can’t understand aspects of the discussion. If that’s the case, am I better off trying to explain everything in a fresh post, or tack onto an existing one so that the people I’m asking for help have context? I personally lean toward the latter approach.

I was also going to suggest closing old posts after they’ve been dormant for a period of time, but sometimes the value is engaging the people who were previously involved in the discussion and have a lot of context. With a new post, that doesn’t happen automatically. So, I’m not sure where the happy medium is.

In the end, I think the best thing we can do is be welcoming at every turn and understand that new users haven’t learned how to engage with this community. That enables us to coach them and help them gain confidence in being part of it. Otherwise, we run the risk of scaring people away because they worry more about being scolded and judged than being helped. The downside is that this requires a lot of patience, and patience wears thin when you feel like you’re saying the same thing over and over again.

As much as I want to protect new users, I also want to prevent dedicated folks like all of you from feeling like this is a burden. Your time and effort is valuable to this community, and hobbies should be fun.

I looked at the referenced topic, and it’s a completely new user.

Yes I can understand your frustration, but it would be best to enable the new user to behave in a desirable way.
That would be beneficial in my eyes.

[Bruce_Osborne]

It is working for threads created after the setting change. I believe the older inactive ones are still open like the one I posted from 2017.

[BrutalBirdie (Elias)]

Hmmm seems like it. Just checked a post from 2015, no message about

There is a way how to do it in bulk, see:

Auto-close old topics from a migrated forum

cd /var/discourse
./launcher enter app
rails c
Topic.where(closed: false).where("created_at < '2015-01-01'").find_each do |topic| 
  topic.update_status("closed", true, Discourse.system_user)
end

But in my opinion this is would be to broad.
If there is a way to be more precise like

created_at < '2015-01-01' AND last_response < '2020-01-01'

The AND last_response < '2020-01-01 is completely fabricated by my mind, but this should be possible.

EDIT:

I just did some database exploration and tested the following in my own little discourse setup and can confirm this works.

cd /var/discourse
./launcher enter app
rails c
Topic.where(closed: false).where("created_at < '2019-01-01' AND updated_at < '2020-01-01'").find_each do |topic| 
  topic.update_status("closed", true, Discourse.system_user)
end

And yes my forum now looks a lot like this close and open since I wanted to revert these changes.

Thank god cloudron.io does auto backups every 12 hours and I can just revert the fuzz.

BUT! BIG BUT!

All topics (effected by the query) suddenly had a NEW notification since the “System” User closed/opened the Topic

This is like a HUGE BULK NECROBUMP.

If this option is being considered, I can provide my Discourse as a testing environment

[Bruce_Osborne]

Paging @kai to see if we can improve the situation further. If this were done in steps (1 year at a time?) that could reduce the server and email load.