Idea regarding ”You should never post questions in old threads”

[Sandman]

That's a fairly common phrase from Erel here on the forum. I imagine that in many cases (perhaps almost all?) the new post to the old thread happened because the poster was just eager and didn't observe the info about this being an old thread:

So I thought it might help to make it even more clear by hiding the reply form when entering an old thread, like this:

The button Post thread goes to that page, for the current part of the forum, just as one might expect.

And the link Show reply form would simply show the form as it is today.

 

[Erel]

Partly done. Hiding the reply form is more complicated.

 

[Sandman]

Nice. You seem to be able to control things easily in the NoticeBlock, so perhaps try by adding this to that block, right after where you added the button? If it doesn't work, the javascript part should probably be moved to the footer of the page so the reply form gets loaded first. I obviously haven't tried running this myself, but I think that the general idea could be this simple.

<script type="text/javascript">
$(".block-container")[1].hidden = true;
</script>
<br><br>
<small>I want to comment in this thread because I have something important to add - <a href="#" onclick="$('.block-container')[1].hidden = false;">Show reply form</a></small>

It's somewhat hackish, especially how I target the reply element, but I couldn't find a better identifier when taking a quick peek at the code.

(For what it's worth, the generic Post Thread you added could be made to automatically point to the same subforum as the user is in. It would take some javascript and get the relevant part from the url of the last breadcrumb.)

 

[udg]

Wouldn't it be easier to run a DB update to "close" threads older than 6/12/18/whatever months?

 

[Sandman]

Wouldn't it be easier to run a DB update to "close" threads older than 6/12/18/whatever months?

Sure, but I imagine that Erel would have done that if that's what he wanted.

 

[udg]

I was inspired by a few old threads where he manually closed them after a new post.
So, why make it manually when a script/chron job/whatever could do just the same?
Anyway, the webmaster will operate for the better.

 

[Erel]

Wouldn't it be easier to run a DB update to "close" threads older than 6/12/18/whatever months?

There are cases where it makes sense to keep the thread open. For example library threads. There are others as well.
Closing the thread will not allow the OP to edit the posts or change the attachments.

Anyway, it is not a big deal.

 

[JohnC]

There are cases where it makes sense to keep the thread open. For example library threads. There are others as well.
Closing the thread will not allow the OP to edit the posts or change the attachments.

Plus, there are times that a follow-on post is important and a notification should be sent to everyone subscribed to that thread.

So, closing a thread completely in my opinion would not be good.