Would it be possible to have topics Auto-close after a period of inactivity. And give users with follow-up questions an easy way to start a new topic that references the old one?
It would be just like a “Locked” topic, but the Reply buttons, would create a new topic and auto insert a link to the original one.
Or is this actually bad idea, as it creates more topics on basically the same issue?
I am always so conflicted about posting to an old topic. I’m with you, Calvin, it’s nice to keep it all together. But yeah, does it really notify EVERYONE ever involved in the thread? I feel so guilty to do that. I tend to do so sparingly.
Is that part necessary, notifying everyone? I don’t really understand the benefit or goal of that.
Maybe have a timer on a topic change the the “Watching / Tracking / Normal / Muted” setting to “Normal” after a period of time that you’ve not looked at the thread.
If someone replies to one of your posts, you’d get a notice anyway.
I’ve become blind to the “suggestions” that appear over the preview area.
My justification for blindly ignoring it, is that I feel that I did a pretty thorough search before deciding to start a new thread.
@ckrusen I think this will end up creating multiple threads to cover the same topic. We actually prefer to see the original threads continued.
As for unsubscribing to updates after a period of time, that could be helpful.
The stuff that shows up on the right is not just about the current topic, it looks at tone and tells you to stop being so whiny/mean (seriously it does lol)
It looks at length of time and tells you to not be that guy who revives a 2 year old post
If you are replying over and over and over again to the same topic it says you should consider longer more complete answers etc…
I just a nanny for the community looking out for and trying to curve certain behaviors, so don’t blindly ignore it plz 
I think that closing an old topic will just lead to more questions on the same topic, and I believe it is valid if someone has a follow up (a year later) on the same topic it would be fine to ping back the original people that were involved (who better to answer the question than those with prior knowledge)
If everybody was upgrading at the same time I could see closing out topics dealing with older versions, but as we are all over the map, then there may be updates from people who are on the same version as the OP was.
Here’s my thoughts (aka “Spending Someone Else’s Time Like It’s Free”):
If the OP does not accept a solution, then email them after a while to remind them to flag a solution or provide more details.
If the post stays quiet too long, then mark the post as closed and unsolved.
If a user wants to post to a solved post, then create a new post and reference the old one (because likely it is not the same issue).
This. I would love to know if a topic is resolved in a search. Quite a few of them are, but having a mechanism to remind people to mark something as resolved would be helpful.
Yes, I know that. What I was trying to say was that if OPs were reminded to mark a “stale” thread as solved (if it was indeed solved) then that would show up in a lot more searches. Sometimes I go through many threads looking at answers that never solve the problem.
The other thing that would be handy is if the post stamped the version of the user at the time that they posted or replied
This seems to change at the moment as the user updates
This is covered in another thread.
Only problem with this, is that this requires the user to actively update there profile. A user could create there profile and fill that value in, and never touch it again.
Only solution to this would be to require the version number at the time of the user making the post. This would have to be another box they fill in.
