Lock old threads

[RTSLVU]

Replying to a thread from 2013 that someone brought back from the dead today reminded me of this.

I still think locking threads after a certain amount of time is a good idea.

[aputman]

If a solution has been provided to the topic, I think the timeline for locking should be drastically reduced.  A conversation may still be in progress so it shouldn't be immediate.  Maybe after a month?  

[RTSLVU]

I think six months of no activity on any thread would be reasonable. 

You can always start a new thread and reference the old one if you are having a similar problem and the solutions in the original thread did not work.

[RTSLVU]

Even NI support Engineers agree that old threads should not be brought back from the dead a year later.

https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Integrating-PuTTY-into-Labview/td-p/1917473/page/2

adena.l wrote:
Hi Aitorplaza - Since this forum post is more than a year old I would recommend posting your question in a new thread. That way it will get more visibility from users. You can reference this thread in your new post!

 Adena L.
Applications Engineering
National Instruments

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[RTSLVU]

A thread over a year old brought back from the dead just to make a snarky comment.

https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/VISA-Write-problem/td-p/3370752

[GerdW]

Another thread from the past with a snarky comment of a fresh "new member" user…

Please lock old threads!

[altenbach]

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@GerdW wrote:

Another thread from the past with a snarky comment of a fresh "new member" user…

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Not sure if it was snarky. Possibly the user searched how to find a local max, the forum search returned this thread, and he was disappointed that the answer is for a different problem (global max vs. local max). This is a valid comment and directly relevant to the existing thread.

About the locking, I would prefer a soft barrier (as probably mentioned before), e.g. a popup stating the age of the thread, suggesting to start a new thread instead, and still giving the option to contribute to the old thread, e.g. to directly comment on what was said as in this case.

[LiliMcDonald]

Thanks for the continued feedback on this. We are continuing to track this in our backlog.

There are a lot of approaches that could be used for this. What do you all is a reasonable timeframe for locking a topic?
- Lock after 6 months? One year?
- Lock after a solution has been marked?
- Lock after a solution has been marked AND one month has passed, etc?

- Or as altenbach suggested, don't lock but display a reminder instead.
- Or a combination of both.

Thanks,

Lili

[Blokk]

IMHO the

"Or as altenbach suggested, don't lock but display a reminder instead."

option would be the optimal...

Edit: I could even imagine a special pop-up window after clicking on "Reply", with an extra option/checkbox: "start a new thread instead replying here, but give me a link to cite to this old thread", or something similar... 

[Hooovahh]

Soft barrier sounds best to me.  All the other suggestions could mean that good discussions don't continue years after a "solution" are found but a better one is done later either with a native LabVIEW feature or new toolkit.  That being said if we do something like that lets put Breakpoint on the list of subforums that don't have a lock or soft barrier.  That place generally discusses things that are silly, and often goes silent for long periods of time only for new light hearted discussions to start up again.