What is the logic behind auto-closing stale comments/questions on this site? For instance, Shiny Bookmarking to automatically save and restore state was kept open over a year and allowed me to reply, but URL shortener for bookmarked URL in R Shiny app was closed 53 days after it was opened.
I might be wrong but I think that there wasn't an automatic rule before, but at some point a rule was added and now (almost) all topics are closed 21 days after the last reply.
This rule is not applied to some categories but I don't know which ones specifically.
Also, high level users are able to close and reopen topics at discretion.
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I think Andres explained really well the nuance between why some threads are autoclosed and others are not. And then some categories "go stale" at different speeds. For example, simple r-coding questions can usually be closed quickly, while shiny problems often take a while get sorted (And then things like jobs and gigs close in 1-2 months).
Why auto-close instead of keeping threads open indefinitely? We used to have threads open indefinitely but found that too often follow-up reply-posts were only tangentially related to the original topic. With the goal of keeping things succinct and tidy, we introduced auto-closing.
I also like the idea of it being reasonable to ask an almost identical question every new year, but with the new thread being focused on the latest technologies, resources, and best practices, without being bogged down by all the old, often deprecated discussion.
That motivated the added text "If you have a query related to it or one of the replies, start a new topic and refer back with a link." in the thread-closing message.
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Thanks to both. I'm not asking "why auto-close", I agree with your logic. I was focusing on the inconsistent timeline of the two questions. Mostly a curiosity, thanks for taking the time 
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This topic was automatically closed 7 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.