I appreciate the intent of thread locking and I do support it in principle, but I think the 12 month inactive locking rule is a bit quick in the big scheme of AC development. Comments made on AC27's release could be locked when AC28 turns up, but I note from past comments some users actually delay deployment of AC by a year to avoid bugs. Those users may then connect with the old problem and not be able to discuss the related issue. Personally I would have thought a minimum two year lock window was more realistic.
I also think it is perhaps inappropriate to be locking the wishes threads. There are ideas in those threads that are still being requested and commented on after MANY years. Allowing further comments allows users to highlight how long the missing idea has been requested or how it could be adapted in more recent versions of AC. If a wish is solved (or implemented in an update) then lock them, but until then I feel we should be allowed to continue commenting.
Apple iMac Intel i9 / macOS Sonoma / AC27UKI (most recent builds.. if they work)
Yes, from a Community member point of view, there is no benefit. But, what you don't see is all of the behind the scenes hours that your volunteer moderators spend dealing with irrelevant posts to old threads that we then have to move (along with the new replies) to create a new topic in the correct forum. It's wonderful that people use the Search functionality (recommended!) to find related topics before posting... but new-ish people don't really understand that an issue they're posting about is not actually related to a similar issue from an old release.
As Barry said, folks can easily start a new thread that references the old one and moderators can in one (awkward) step back-merge that entire thread into the old topic and then unlock it.... which is way less work than for us to move, one by one, new replies that really belong somewhere else.
One of the forum moderators AC 28 USA and earlier • macOS Sonoma 14.7.1, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
I run a forum myself for architects in New Zealand, so need to deal with the same thing on occasion - (albeit on a much smaller scale with only 700 subscribers).
It sounds like the process may be more laborious to administer on this forum software. (mine is based on Discourse)
All I normally need to do when shifting material to a new thread is scroll down and mark the point at which the topic changed sufficiently to justify shifting, supply a new topic header and let the forum software do the rest, migrating all subsequent replies.
I suppose complexity ensues when some replies are to one topic, some to the other - but that applies irrespective of thread age when users go off topic.
If thread locking is intended as a way to prevent accidental off topic replies, then using reply frequency to a topic as a proxy for relevance is arguably using a pretty blunt instrument - at least as likely to prevent on-topic replies as off-topic replies. And by cutting up what would otherwise be continuous thread, you trigger increased odds of redundancy, with responses found on first thread spontaneously effectively arising again on second thread from people who might not have encountered or remember the first thread.
All I normally need to do when shifting material to a new thread is scroll down and mark the point at which the topic changed sufficiently to justify shifting, supply a new topic header and let the forum software do the rest, migrating all subsequent replies.
That's all we had to do in the previous platform called 'archicad-talk' (PHP-based, but becoming unsupportable apparently... and Graphisoft then chose to use Khoros rather than Discourse for some reason.) Here, there is an option to move a post and its replies... which sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. But if the next person responding to the woken up topic responds to the OP, then that's a new subthread that has to be moved separately. Etc.
As Barry noted, this process shouldn't break up threads at all. If someone finds the original thread and cannot respond, the hope is that they post as he suggested by mentioning the thread in their post so that a moderator can then unlock the original thread and merge things so that it is all together as the poster had wished.
I do feel that nothing newer than 3 years or so (covering the 2 supported releases of Archicad) should be locked. But I was outvoted. 🤐
One of the forum moderators AC 28 USA and earlier • macOS Sonoma 14.7.1, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
