The automatic closing of topics seems flawed

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1

Hi!
I posted a question thread. The page said that the topic will be closed one month after the last reply. After some messages, a reply that solved the problem was posted. I read the message about 9 hours after it had been posted and marked the reply as the solution and clicked on the heart button as well. Then I tried to write a reply to give thanks. However, I could not post but got the information that the the topic was closed 1 minute ago and
“This topic was automatically closed 60 minutes after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.”

So, the problem is:

  • The logic seems to have counted 60 minutes from the posting timestamp but did not give any grace period from the moment the topic was marked as the solution.
  • The marking as solution could not be undone but the topic was irreversibly locked.
  • There was no warning about that closing period changing from 30 days from the last reply changing to 60 minutes after the last reply when a reply was marked as the solution, let alone it being effected immediately with no possibility of undoing.

Thanks for considering this matter.

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2

You can

  • send your ‘thank you’ as PM to me, with a URL for the thread you wanted/tried to post it to, and I’ll add what you sent there
  • or let me know the thread & I’ll open it for a ~day so you have time
  • post the thank you on a ‘new’ thread, and send a PM asking me to add it to the closed thread

These are options that have been done in the past. Alas you’re not the first person to discover this.

1 Like
3

OK, thanks, I sent a private message.

Your message seems to suggest “between the lines” that the workings of the forum system can not easily be altered in this respect… huh?

If the problematic feature(s) are not going away, then I guess people should just remember that marking some message as the solution should be the very last operation that concludes the discussion.

4

You could try saying thanks before clicking the button to mark it as the solution.

I suspect that’d work just fine.

5

Discourse has a plugin called “Solved” (Solved | Discourse - Civilized Discussion) which allows users and mods to mark a thread as “Solved”.

In the settings you can set a value for “solved topics auto close hours” (GitHub - discourse/discourse-solved: Allow accepted answers on topics).

Personally I would set the value to 24, 48 or 72 hours.

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6

Thanks for the hint – that sounds good. Page GitHub - discourse/discourse-solved: Allow accepted answers on topics says that it can be found in “Admin > Plugins” but is that place only available for administrators? Please let me know if there is some way for standard users to access it via this web interface.

1 Like
7

If the item is found under Admin, I doubt you can do much.

I’m without reliable internet connection currently (alas third week now), thus my comments & ability to do anything beyond rare basic messages is minimal, for now anyway.

8

Yes, it is best practice to limit access to configurations to authorised personnel only.

As far as I know @teward is the site administrator.

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9

This is only configurable by the administrators. There’s a select few people on the Council with full site admin status, but I’m the only one - council or otherwise because I was hired before I was even on the council as the Lubuntu Team’s infra sysadmin - with god level access (which after conferring with the current Council members is likely to remain the case whether I am on the Council after next election or not)

It would require Lubuntu Council decision to change or set automated closing of topics after answer acceptances. Only admins can access the admin section.

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