Hi,
I asked this question a while ago, and it was closed a few days ago. I was just wondering what the policy on closing/reopening posts was...the reason is that my question seems to have been answered with the official release of the reticulate package, as per this blog post (fantastic work btw!). I thought it would be good for people who saw the post to know it's been solved.
For those uninitiated, Closing a topic mainly just prevents new replies.
My thinking is that with older, longer threads, that seem to have played themselves out (no new replies in several weeks), that it would be better to close the topic and invite people to reopen the discussion as a new topic.
Some of these topics get very confusing to follow as threads get longer, discussion split, replies are months ago.
(Also, the way discourse handles reply threads personally seems less tidy than it could be.)
When closing these kind of stale topics, do you think we should post a final reply offering guidance to those just discovering the thread? Suggesting they open a new topic? That's probably a good idea.
Or do you disagree with this approach?
There is no official policy on closing topics here yet. Your feedback is welcome on getting this right.
Particularly if something irks you the wrong way.
I think aging topics, i.e. threads, by closing them with a final administrative message explaining why they were closed and and the further discussion should be started with a new topic but with a link to the closed thread is a good idea.
As ever, I like your advice.
As an automatic reply, something like:
[From some admin account]
do you hear crickets?
This topic was getting a little stale and has been closed to new replies.
If you'd like to discuss it, please open a new topic and link back to this discussion.
The cricket thing is maybe a little bit of a dad joke.
I agree with @danr that an administrative message would be good, but I think it would be better to be able to re-open the topic instead of making a new topic and linking back to it. If the admin message is automatic, OK, I understand why that may be necessary, but a message explaining why the post was closed (if there's a reason other than it being old) would be nice to have. In the case of the post I originally linked to, it could be a link to the RStudio replicatpackage post, showing that the issue is dealt with, for example. (Although I know that makes more work for the admins.)