expiring old forum threads

[bpabbott]

On occasion someone does a web search for a problem they have with Octave, they find something in Nabble, and then they reply to an old post from a few years ago about that problem.

Often  the topic is dead and buried and the people who participated in that discussion are possibly long ago gone. Instead, I'd like to encourage to ask a new question, possibly directly referencing the old thread they found.

To this end, I'd like to know if it's possible to expire threads in Nabble so that replies are no longer permitted?

[GregChapman]

You're talking about "Locking" a topic - that prevents someone from replying to it. However, currently, there's no mechanism for automating locking on the basis of date of last post in a topic, which is what you seem to be asking for.

All you can do is lock a topic manually and individually.

Other options to prevent posting include moving such topics into an "Archive" sub-forum from which you remove the "Reply" permission, or to one that is only visible to registered users. That would prevent a search engine reading it, so old topics would eventually get lost from their search results. However, these options still require that you decide which topics reach the "expired" criteria and that you take the action manually.

On the other hand, if you're a wizard at writing NAML code... (I'm not!)

[bpabbott]

I think it would be acceptable to lock a topic based upon the date of the original post. Or Alternatively, just lock posts after a particular period of time.

It is necessary to manually place topics/posts into an Archive, or can that be done in an automated way?

Ben

[GregChapman]

Currently, there is no mechanism within Nabble to set any of these methods I suggested to be applied automatically. You would have to do any of them manually.

The only exception is that Nabble does delete topics that have not been visited for a long period. They send you an email warning you of impending deletion so you can visit the topics you want to preserve them on your forum.

So it is possible that Nabble might choose implement such a feature as it would encourage admins to reduce the storage requirements of their forum/archive. We can only await one of the team's reaction.

[Pedro]

It is a good idea to lock a topic after a certain period, but do you think it should be based on the original post or based on the last reply?

[bpabbott]

I'd rather not kill a discussion in progress.

So, I'd prefer the topic be locked after a specified period of time relative to the last reply.

[Pedro]

Do you have any suggestion about how long would take to lock a topic? A couple of months? One year?

[bpabbott]

Being able to specify the time to lock would be a nice feature, but barring that 1 yr would be ok.

[Pedro]

Ok, we will start to work on it.

[Pedro]

Done: Options > Application > Extras and add-ons" (Mailing list archives | Lock old threads)

[bpabbott]

Thanks for this Pedro.  I tried to set up the expiration on Octave-General, but don't see the option there yet.  Perhaps I'm looking in the wrong place, or it hasn't yet rolled out?

I've attached a small png of what I see.



I checked the "Mailing list archive settings", but don't see anything there either.

[GregChapman]

Oo-er!

I think you should see something more like this if logged in as an administrator:

[bpabbott]

Ok, on my second attempt, I got the correct result!

Thanks
Ben