I’m going to raise this issue again, prompted by my recent perusal of
Here’s an example of a great thread, started in 2015, which is still useful and still being added to in useful and meaningful ways right up to this day. It’s a great repository, in one place, of the history of the evolution of kicost, with lots of user input about features and issues. Had this topic been auto-closed after 30 or 90 days, many new topics would have had to have been spawned, scattering the information all over the forum and making searching much more difficult and tedious.
I just don’t understand the rationale for ever closing a topic, unless it’s devolved into something objectionable or abusive.
Here’s another example, from just a few months ago:
What if I have just come across this topic and have a suggestion for improving the author’s workflow? Or a question or problem with it? Start a new topic, referencing this one, which may or may not be found by anyone reading the original? Makes no sense.
If you want to reach any particular person or avatar you write an @ followed by their forums name like so: @JuliaTruchsess . There even comes up a suggestion list that can help you.
All this being said, I get your POV and just wait for more opinions I guess.
I’m not calling the shots here, I just try to help.
But it’s definitely not hard to get attention of someone or add further information to a particular topic, especially if titles are chosen wisely.
Lifetimes of topics are being handled in the category settings… one by one. It’s not a global forum setting.
And as I just found out the topic lifetime can be set per topic even… might need to ask @davidsrsb if he can access that area, but it’s labeled ‘Topic Admin actions’… so no idea.
There is just @ChrisGammell and @Joan_Sparky at that level afai-aware.
So if nothing else helps and you need to get access to the original topic, just summon a moderator or admin and be nice
IMHO Please be aware that all too often useful new information is being buried in very long topics and you will not find them. A shorter newer topic, which focuses on the new problem or whatever might be better suited for the task, especially if it got a proper title. I see this sometimes on other forums, were a 2-3 year lapse doesn’t help anyone once a topic is dug up again as none of the old posters usually reply.
Oh, come on. Any information is useless after three months? KiCad changes at a glacial pace (apart from the bleeding-edge nightlies), and little that’s not cosmetic has changed in Windows and MacOS in ages as well.
People threadjack brand-new topics just as often as they do old ones. There was little-to-no threadjacking on the 3-year-old thread I cited.
The issue is posts older than 90 days, not necessarily long posts, although I guess if you’re in favor of closing older posts you might be in favor of closing long posts, too. “This topic has been closed because we don’t think our forum members have long enough attention spans to read it.”
If I need or want to learn about something, I’ll read through as many posts as it takes. I read that whole KiCost thread today (not sure how many posts are in it), found it informative, and was glad to find that it had been added to recently. If you think all old information is useless then start at the end and work backwards until it’s too stale for you.
I guess you’re allowed to make your points but I’m not allowed to rebut or question them. Sorry, I thought a “discussion” involved people exchanging viewpoints.
But anyway, yeah, I’ve stated my point and will not belabor it further. If the will of the people is that topics be closed after 3 months, so be it.
I think the issue is someone can sign up to spam, make a few posts, and come back months later to edit those posts into spam for SEO purposes. I think it is more a failing of the software that edited posts don’t get marked as new. If they did then folks like me that use the “latest” feature would see these changes. And, yeah, these people are getting more discreet/savvy in terms of avoiding detection. They will hire people to go around creating accounts everywhere and then sit on them because they know their first posts are more closely watched.
As someone that has spent time and money fighting these ‘fill in the blank’, I can sympathize.
I think keeping certain threads open indefinitely is a great idea! I find it annoyingly when a thread from 2015 on Apple’s support forums is closed when I have the same issue or found a workaround and want to share.
Spam and other issues hadn’t occurred to me though. Perhaps there’s a way to solve both problems. Since software is flexible, maybe we could have a way to request a revival of a closed thread (and post at the same time). The request would hit a moderator, and if approved, go live immediately and the thread would have another three-month crack at life.
(Also: I agree that KiCad moves at a glacial pace and info from even several years ago is still quite relevant, except in a few isolated areas such as graphics engines.)
Is there any way to close posts to editing after a certain amount of time, but still allow replies? I don’t think anyone is asking for the ability to edit ancient posts.
I think answering as a new topic is a better idea in most cases anyways. Especially for the posts given as an example above. Who wants to read through 30+ posts just because somebody got a python error when running a tool introduced in the first post of the topic.
There are lots of settings in regards to that… one for example determines for how long you can edit your posts until they get frozen (right now 180 days). We could change that… but then a topic and the first post in the KiCost topic would get the same treatment. Or the ones in the FAQ category…
Also some settings aren’t available via the global admin control page, but rather out there with the topics or category overview… so it’s very hard to keep track of things IMHO.
Also a setting. What do you think is appropriate? Unfortunately there is no trust level fine adjustment there
We can always fork/join topics/posts pretty much willy-nilly.
Just some clicking and not loosing focus
But a way to do what you suggest would be to post a new thread with a reference to the old one and flag it to be joined.
As we can always modify singular topics and adjust their lifetime after being pointed out by the community there is no hard barrier there either?
I am ready to release a update of KiCost. So, what is the better option: comment in the old topic or create a new one and put a reference to the old one?
