Many issues/topics posted to the forum only affect a very small number of users. I often find similar topics to things I want to post only to find they are locked with no responses. Often times I am just outside of when it was locked.
I understand Plex staff can only get to so many issues on their own, but the forum makes it so community can assist each other. The fact that topics get locked so quickly means users cannot easy ask the original poster questions, or even offer solutions in the event the topic was not solved.
I believe removing the automatic lock, or even changing the period to 1 year would greatly improve the forum experience. Perhaps it would bring people back to the forum instead of seemingly everyone posting on reddit and other plex groups around the internet. The forum has a lot of benefits (categories, searching, etc.), but with the automatic locking it makes it painful to use.
I disagree. But I guess it really matters very little. I would actually prefer a lock after two months.
locking threads after a period of inactivity just makes sense. If there is a topic that has been inactive for a period of time it means that interest has flagged and, if interest reasserts itself after closure a new thread can be started (with a link to the original thread if desired) or, a PM can be sent to one of the mods that has the power asking that the original thread be reopened.
The vast majority of threads that are inactive for even a month are truly dead and need to be interred before they begin to stink. Two months would be better for me but three months is a decent compromise.
It should be noted however that there are many very old threads that are more than a year old that are not locked. It seems that the “automatic lock” is applied unevenly and rather in a haphazard way.
I disagree, but I mostly use the forum in dev/third party categories (far less users who can even answer).
These are just some of my posts that are yet to have any valuable resolution. The forum is full of similar niche topics that just get closed before anyone can even answer.
Sure stuff like this (Pre Roll no longer working Version 1.23.4.4712) is likely dead after a month or two. Same with users asking the same old questions about why their movie doesn’t match properly.
So maybe the locking period could be setup differently for different forum categories. I’ve also noticed it’s not consistently enabled.
I disagree as well. I’ve come across a great many posts (including some of my own) where problems were reported that automatically locked after 3 months, having never gotten a single response from anyone. That’s incredibly frustrating, and reflects poorly on Plex.
I made the following statement in another thread:
I think the apparent unevenness of old/unlocked threads is due, at least in part, to threads being present before the switch to Discourse forum software. I think the rule may not be applied to those threads without some admin intervention.
Threads in the Feature Suggestions forum never (automatically) close (although we discovered a bug/exception to that a couple years ago).
I have flagged posts, asking for them to be re-opened, from time to time. But I grumble about Plex’s disregard for adequate support every time.
The auto locking after three months is not going to go away. If you need a thread reopened because you know you have the same issue or it is your unresolved issue just ask a mod to reopen it.
I’m not sure it’s a development question, but it’s definitely a question for whoever is responsible at Plex for importing xml epg files. Probably no one else is going to know the answer and this certainly isn’t documented anywhere.
I have posts in dev categories that were locked after 90 days. I guess I’ll just message mods whenever I want something re-opened.
I don’t really understand why threads need to be locked to begin with. This is not a IT ticket system. You can look at number of replies and last reply date to see if a thread is active or not.
Bur whether you change it or not is up to you, but it just drives people away from the forum. I really only come here for really difficult issues now, that can’t be solved on reddit or Plexahaulics group on Facebook. They’re usually not solved here either though. That’s my experience and I’ve seen way too many people complain about the same exact thing so figured you guys would want to improve the experience.
You developed/created a script and you are asking because you want that script to work so I would say development category is the right place. I will move it there and check if one of our metadata devs knows when they are around.
As far as development questions because you want to make something we or other users are not under any obligation to help you build/script something so yeah honestly you might not get a solution for that sort of question. Things created in that category do not get closed. ( but there is a possible issue with posts that were moved to it from another category
I don’t believe that locking threads drives people away much at all and I believe that not locking dead threads will drive some folks away. Many of those that actually try to help but are not Plex functionaries would be possibly turned off by seeing a bunch of threads that are inactive.
Of course the forums way of operating that pushes inactive posts down the forum as other posts are responded to or created pretty much handles that problem.
However once a thread has three months without activity it then makes little sense to post to it as that pushes it back to the top. Once that happens the thread has a three month gap with nothing posted and it loses continuity.
It is better, as I mentioned earlier, to start a new thread and include a link to the old one if it still has relevance. It is not much harder to do that and it means that threads will be fresh.
Remember that for the beta server at least there could easily be more than three server releases in three months and that changes things dramatically.
I just see no legitimate reason to leave threads that have had no activity for three months open as it serves no reasonable purpose except for a very limited few posters and they can easily open a new thread and include a link to the old one.
One more thing very few new posters actually bother to search before posting so having and old thread way down the post list is useless for them.
The main reason they are closed is because folks tend to reply to them with versions of “me too” on topics that are only similar on a base sypmtom.
There can be a million reasons for “metadata not working” or “remote access not working” and folks hav a tendency to think because they the same symptom that they have the same issue. and don’t provide any new info. Last night there was an issue on our back end with metadata for example which was resolved last night. Someone posting 3+ months later with “me too” for an that issue seems similar what is most likely not related at all just happened too much.
what is locked is based on what category it was made in. Feature Request, lounge where folks are just taking about stuff not really reporting issues are not closed. Development categories are not closed either. (but as I mentioned above I am looking into why topics do not get updated when moved to one of those categories.)
There’s no continuity loss when a thread never receives a response, no matter how long it remains on the forum. I see no legitimate reason to close such a thread if the problem is never resolved, or even acknowledged. In that case, starting a new thread for the exact same issue just adds another thread to the forum, and is in itself a break in continuity (a bigger break, in fact, than a thread with 3 months between posts). A link to the closed one, which says the same thing, is redundant.
Regarding your example of yesterday’s metadata issue, closing the thread once the issue is resolved is absolutely the right thing to do. But if there’s no resolution, nor even acknowledgement, then automatically closing the thread is an insult to the user that posted it.
Unfortunately there are just too many topics and too few of us. There are multiple topics for that issue and probably some i don’t know about because they were titled in a non obvious way so there is always going to be some topics are missed and IMO should still be closed. If someone is really still having an issue going on close to 3 months they can bump it before then to prevent it and they can ping a mod in that bump which plenty of folks do regularly.
I’d go further. I wish I could close my own threads some times. Some times I figure out an answer before anyone responds. I wish I could just post what I found and mark as closed.
If you didn’t close it, people would be piggy backing on it blaming their current issue on it.
If you are the topic starter, you can reply to your own topic with what you found and mark the reply as the solution. (only the topic starter and mods can see the solution button on replies)
