Can we post on old topics? (When and how?)

First post you necroed was 2 years old and regarding megasync. You posted to mention flatpaks are available. Which if you search for megasync has been mentioned before, and probably more times I am missing. We don't need people going through necroing every posting that didn't mention that particular solution.

The second post was regarding adding Thunar to the repository. To point out a value add with Thunar. That thread was once again was 2 years old and as datadrake pointed out. The forums are not a valid way to request a package regardless.

Solus does not automatically lock threads, so threads like "song of the day" can be revived as by design they are supposed to be used in perpetuity, and several other niche scenarios such as when the creator of the thread (usually a support request) does not always respond in time or there is an ongoing issue that needs more information or a solution is in the unstable repository and the user will report back once it reaches stable etc etc.

The rules of another forum on the internet are irrelevant.

Harvey The rules of another forum on the internet are irrelevant.

I can only hear that in a Dalek voice.
I'll get my coat, I know the way out.

WetGeek Perhaps it would a nice touch to have a pinned message, recommending/asking that forum users start a new post for certain situations (and give examples).
I myself had no idea what a 'necro' meant, except that used in the word 'necromancer', which would not apply in this context.

Alright, so let me give you folks a little bit of background on the how and why the necro rule came about and then we can get into the reason its hard to set a hard and fast rule around it.

The Why

There's a few main reasons why we want folks to avoid necroing old posts:

1. The older a post is, the less relevant the information in that post becomes to the current state of Solus and its software. Creating a new post encourages folks to share recent experiences and information, which can avoid confusion with old solutions that are no long valid, as well as avoiding the spread of misinformation through the tribal knowledge of the forums.
2. More often than not, discussions tend to get increasingly off-topic as more and more replies get added. Folks have a habit of commenting on old threads for things that actually aren't related to the original purpose of the topic, which doesn't really help the main discussion.
3. Some people hijack old threads to ask something unrelated or something they think is totally unrelated. This ends up creating sub-topics inside of a thread that aren't easily discovered, making it harder to find information, not easier.

The How

We switched from phpBB to Flarum a few years back because phpBB was becoming difficult to moderate, especially when it came to spam posts. Flarum was then (and is now) still quite new and a lot of functionality just wasn't there. So we scouted around for extensions and things to get it to the experience we have today. Being able to Lock posts is pretty rough around the edges in Flarum. Namely:

1. Posts can't be auto-locked after a fixed period of time being idle.
2. All locks need to be manually put in place by a moderator.
3. There aren't any extensions that add support for (1), but there are extensions that close threads after they reach a certain age.

So (1) puts us in a bad starting place to enforcing a necro rule. We can't use an extension for (3) because long-running threads would end up getting locked and then follow-up threads would litter everything. And enforcing locking via (2) requires that we audit all old posts to see which ones need to be locked. There are over 6k discussion threads on here already. That's a lot of work to go back and retroactively enforce a rule. I can also say that we have historically tried to close old Tasks on the Dev Tracker and it can seriously take several days for one person to go through all of the open Tasks and decide when to close them. Doing something similar for threads here is a lot of extra work for very little benefit.

As far as why there isn't a hard and fast rule for when a post should not be necroed, it really boils down to it being hard to decide when feedback is no longer needed or relevant. I can pretty confidently say if something has been inactive for over a year, it's best to open a new topic and not let the old one get in the way of the discussion. I personally have only ever enforced necroing for posts that are inactive (from the date of the last comment) for over 6 months. If its a few days/weeks/months after the post went inactive, continuing the discussion may be useful. It a solution was never found for a problem, it might actually be important to resurrect that thread. There's really no one-size-fits all rule we can apply.

Wrap up

So I've more or less clued you all in on the important bits about this rule. I definitely recognize that we can do more to help others be aware that rules like this exist, and I'll be working with @JoshStrobl to see if we can't decide on a good place to document that. I'm open to feedback on what limits to set around necroing, but I would also ask that y'all please respect our decision when we do make those changes.

And lastly, I do want to say that we aren't trying to be hostile in enforcing this. We pretty much have a three strike system when it comes to each of the rules we enforce here. Meaning if any moderator has to tell you more than twice, it's a bannable offense. We hold everyone to this standard and I promise you we do not make decisions like that out of malice. And I hope you can understand now why this necroing rule is important to how these forums operate.

Cheers.

DataDrake Alright, so let me give you folks a little bit of background on the how and why the necro rule came about and then we can get into the reason its hard to set a hard and fast rule around it.

Bea, thanks for the very complete explanation. My only thought is, as difficult as it is for moderators to decide when something is a "necro" offense, it's often way more difficult for ordinary forum users to know exactly where the boundaries are.

WetGeek Absolutely. We definitely recognize that and I don't think we've actually banned anyone specifically for this, to date. The main thing I would hope is that people stop and think before they comment on something that's been inactive for awhile.

Harvey Thank you for the explanation. ️

Harvey I 'never' said they were universal or even implied it. I merely suggested it was a function found in other forums, Akin to saying some dogs have short legs, not demanding that all dogs have their legs shortened.

Anyway, DataDrake as usual gives a super informative, thorough, explanation, which covers all the issues. B - you should give seminars on how to post on forums! I'm kidding. I'm sure you have neither the time or inclination though is the world's forums that lose out.

I'm all up to speed on this post necrosis thing now 'thumbs up emoji'

DataDrake (2) requires that we audit all old posts to see which ones need to be locked. There are over 6k discussion threads on here already. That's a lot of work to go back and retroactively enforce a rule.

1) clear explanation. when you deliver, you deliver.
2) i had already thought about the people-power required to clear/close audit the old threads. (I still stand by my advocacy of replacing it with a self-policing mechanism). But only wrote to say if you went that route I would volunteer time for this and without doubt many more would. Lay down some clear thread-closing criteria to the volunteers and it could happen. It would give forum members a chance to help take the hassle out of the devs/mods/package maintainers' schedules (if you can keep us all on the same page. )

kyrios agree. referring to an old thread on a new thread is how I like to do it. It does add value in that someone that attempts to help has that additional context that might bring an answer.