Any reason(besides the forum dying) that we couldn’t just lock a project that hasn’t had any posts from the OP in like 6 months or something, until they come back and message a mod/staff member asking to unlock it? Cuz honestly, nobody is happy to see something they were looking forward to that died 5 years ago with somebody who’s only posted 3 times, 2 in the topic in question, to say ‘plz come back, link no worky, help help gimme gimme’. If it’d cause confusion/distress to the OP, maybe you could just end it with a reply like ‘topic locked because of OP inactivity, @DeadGuy, if you want it unlocked, please message a mod/staff member’.
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I have debated this and if I remember correctly I can configure an ttl for posts so they auto lock after a set period of time with no activity. I am just on the fence about it as I can agree necro posting can be a bit annoying but also sometimes its nice for some older games when some one stumbles across it and they really want to talk about it.
Maybe could be nice for a more general category geared towards discussion so users could make new topics instead of necro posting. Idk, I would like to do quite a bit of rework to certain parts of the forum so could be on the list.
In the recent upgrade I did there is now a way to vote on topics directly so I may actually ask you to remake this post once I get that kind of setup as I would be interested to see what the general community support for us enabling that would be.
Life can get complicated and if a Dev comes back after a while, it would make more sense to just Necro the thread than make a whole new one.
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Is it possible to have it so after a period of inactivity (or by dev discretion) that it gets moved from “Projects” to a new topic like “Completed/Inactive Projects”? Personally, I consider my 1 fully released game completed and I’m not going to do new development on it, but it might be nice if it wasn’t buried in years of inactivity for people to be able to find it, same goes for a lot of games that have simply been completed.
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Unfortunately, the times the ‘sometimes it’s nice’ scenario happens are buried under all the times the ‘it sucks when’ scenario happens. There are general discussion categories that someone could just put an ‘Old Projects You Discovered’ topic in and people can post links and comments.
Like I said, if the dev comes back they just message a mod and say “hey I’ve got an update, can you unlock my topic?”
I think a category like that for COMPLETED games could work, but not “inactive” games. Cuz then they just have to be moved back to the normal category if the dev come back and wants to continue it.
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It’s a lot less hassle imho to apply an ‘inactive’ tag to a thread than to unlock a thread; sometimes people ask questions about games that were never completed and that’s okay, so long as they can be kept separate for those looking for updated on those with active development.
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I don’t think Necro posting is too big of an issue, I think it’s better to avoid locking threads. Devs get busy but they can always come back, like Debu Complex for example
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Hm… Maybe some tag like “completed” may help with it. If user want to check all completed games then filter search by that tag.
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I’ve been annoyed by frivolous or oblivious necroposting enough times to wish we could stop it, but as I’ve discovered before, the forum already shows a warning when you’re about to post in a thread that’s been inactive for a long time. Maybe it’s just not in-your-face enough, but I’m more inclined to believe that people saw the warning and chose to necropost anyway, either not believing that they were being a nuisance or just not caring about it.
Personally, I don’t really like the idea of locking devs out of their own topics, since there’s always a chance they could come back with an update (even for projects that were supposed to already be completed). Sure, the dev could ask to have the thread unlocked, but would they think to do that? I suspect that a lot of them would just make a new thread instead, possibly while grumbling about having to do so, and then the mods would have to merge the threads so that previous discussion wouldn’t be lost. It would just be more of a hassle for everyone involved.
Really, when necroposting is annoying, it’s almost exclusively done by other users, not the devs. So I suppose if you had a way to restrict only other users’ ability to post in old threads, that could help. But that would still risk shutting out users who happened to find the game late and have genuine discussion to contribute. I also see a lot of necroposts that are just someone asking for help with some part of the game, and while those often aren’t of any interest to me personally, they’re still legitimate questions that shouldn’t be shut out.
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There is already a tag for that, its Topics tagged full under release which indicates the game has finished development, though might be worth renaming it
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Please read more than just the title, because I adressed this. Leave a reply @’ing the OP explaining why it was locked and what to do to get it unlocked. If explicit instructions they’re directly alerted to don’t get through to them, well, maybe then we just direct them to resources that can give them a lesson in developing critical thinking skills.
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FWIW, sometimes necro-ing is how newer people discover older games and/or allows third parties sharing new mods and the like for said games without a whole new thread. That’s why I think a unique tag would be the easiest way for folks like you that aren’t interested in it to avoid clicking through to the less justifiable examples. I agree, it can be disappointing to scroll through a lot of games when looking for new updates (that’s honestly a fundamental problem with Discourse moreso than anything) but I do like to see younguns discovering stuff people like me were playing several years ago.
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I did read your suggestion, but I was still concerned that devs would take the quicker route of starting a new thread rather than going through the process of asking the mods to unlock it. Perhaps wording the notice as a stronger instruction could help, but considering the apparent ineffectiveness of the existing necropost warning, I’m not sure.
Also, for what it’s worth, I consider “Link is broken, is this game still available anywhere?” to be a valid necropost. Even if it’s irrelevant to me personally, I still wouldn’t want to deny others the chance to reshare a game that otherwise might be lost to time.
I do like the idea of a tag, since, as I said, I don’t want to discourage newcomers from discussing old games. As for guiding newcomers to old games that they might like, though, I feel like that’s a slightly different issue. Necroposting might occasionally help with that by accident, but I’m sure there must be better solutions out there. (Not saying that I have a clear answer myself; I just think the issue of discovery would probably be better addressed as its own thing.)