Closing of Threads After 90 Days is Premature

[Ardwych]

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and IT problems aren’t solved in a virtual instant.

Surely closing threads in 90 days cuts off a large amount of enquiry for people who drop into this forum only occasionally?
Many of us aren’t everyday users, tackling Shotcut issues only from time to time - but when we come across an issue in a thread that has a nuance that isn’t covered or clear, then we’re stumped.

We have to either start a new thread with, say, a duplicated title augmented by ‘Pt II’, or give up. A new thread doesn’t attract the former participants via notifications, and the second alternative is best not to contemplate.
It seems to me that the essential duplication of threads will just create a scattering of information and invite frustration under a search tool that rarely serves us well in these forums.

This 90 days policy deprecates Shotcut. Its becoming an insoluble puzzle will likely just send people away.
It is not an optimal process, I suggest.

Is there a particular reason for cutting off existing threads - because the information gets unusably out of date, or old threads attract abuse? Something else?

[Austin]

Please consider leaving topics open

I’ve just posted a topic and saw this message at the bottom: This topic will automatically close in 3 months. What if someone comes up with a solution to someone else’s problem after 4 months? What if a new version solves the problem after 5 months? Do we want to leave outdated information in the topic? What if a new user searches for the problem, finds that closed topic, and decides Shotcut sucks because it had issue X or bug Y, which is not solved but nobody could update the topic? These…

[dandv]

@Ardwych

Something else?

A phobia against “necroposting”, perpetuated from darker corners and days of the Internet, with audiences vastly different from that of Shotcut, and far less advanced and powerful forum software than Discourse.

I’ve written at length about why closing threads prematurely is a terrible idea. Reddit is the biggest offender.

[SCGaming]

I agree and disagree. Closing a forum page can be both good and bad in the case of improvement. Because people could start posting problems from a newer version of shotcut, on an already old page. So they wouldn’t link up. Hence it is good to have a time limit. But there should be a way to ‘reactivate’ a forum I think. This way we can still get a longer than 90 day limit, but can also help be able to tell people that this is an old forum that no longer applies to todays problem.