Lock forum threads after years of inactivity to avoid necro-posting

[Blooshing]

Hello all,

Before I get into the meat of the post, I was not sure if this should've gone in the osu discussions or on the osu-web since I kind of want this to be a discussion and not an immediate issue, but it has to deal with the web side of osu!development so I feel that it belongs to this repo more.

One of the biggest issues I can see as a frequent forums user is that there tends to be a lot of necroposting (whether it is intentional or not is besides the point) in certain subforums (help, development, mapping, gameplay & rankings, and general discussion (basically all of them...)).

Anyways, trying to somewhat ease the nuisance that is having to report and remove necroposts, some of the forum contributors and I have came up with an idea that might help to ease this issue. The solution we came up with is to auto-lock threads that have not had consistent activity for 3/4/5* years.

We didn't want to punish creators or forum makers for creating a thread that has stood the test of time and has constant activity (forum-games), mapping/modding queues, development threads that are active, etc., we mainly wanted to hit the nail on the head with those posts that should truthfully just be locked without any need of GMT or staff doing it after an issue has already occurred.

• • this can be judged and determined internally with osu!team as they see fit, the proposal that was suggested was 3 years since 1 and 2 do seem a little short, but for the most part any discussion that is 1 year old is most likely better off being in its own thread (in my opinion).

Thank you for the read and I look forward to creating a thorough conversation.

[cl8n]

I don't follow why necroposts are reported and removed. is there something about necroposts that makes them more likely to be rule-breaking or otherwise unwanted? the special treatment seems odd to me

[Blooshing]

I might not be the best person to reply to this since I am not a part of staff but necroposts tend to be off-topic or don't provide anything towards the original thread. If someone is posting in a dead thread of 10+ years they most likely aren't providing anything that hasn't already been resolved, talked about, or honestly, there is probably a thread that is newer that they can post on.

I believe the special treatment is because it is currently the only issue that can be resolved without needing a staff member to look at the context and meaning of the post.

Most of the older threads are locked anyways because users necroposted more than enough times to warrant a lock. I believe this may help that issue?

If the thread NEEDS to be revived then the person that wants to revive it could simply ask a staff member to unlock it (if possible?) and allow that user to post, but I doubt that is going to happen on many, if any, occasion.

[abraker95]

The feature request on forums: https://osu.ppy.sh/community/forums/topics/180252

[peppy]

I can definitely agree with this one. To confirm, you're saying that locking after 3 years of no activity would be enough? I'd argue towards the lower end of the scale if that's the case.

[RockRoller01]

The lower end of the scale, probably 1 year (or even half a year) would work for most forums.

[Blooshing]

Yeahh, 3 years does seem like a long time in retrospect. Lower end of the scale would be wonderful.

[hikikuman]

Totally agree with what Blushing and RockRoller said.

Having an automatic lock feature for 2y (or maybe 1y) old thread is definitely good and better than 3y. I mean, 3y is also good but didn't we also sometimes do deletion and lock on necroposted threads that are less than 2y old?

And yeah maybe we can also make exceptions on specific forums, like this one as an example: https://osu.ppy.sh/community/forums/18. This forum is rarely visited by people but we have no reason to lock the threads. Wouldn't it be weird if they had to make one for their own language every 1y or 2y?

[Master-chan]

Instead of locking old threads you can soft-lock them like spigotmc does:

[tatitatai]

would be good. Especially for old (mostly resolved) help threads, it would be nice to show a notice saying something like "The resolution in the thread from xxx time ago might be outdated now, please create a new topic!". Because google mostly shows old results.

[peppy]

I think we can move this out of proposal.

In theory should be a relatively simple implementation?

[nanaya]

fwiw there's already this notice for old threads

[peppy]

I see, so either need to reword that, or have that show after x months and lock after n*x months.