Why does Steam allow old threads to be open?

[CEO Hunter]

So old threads are left open, if someone posts in an old thread, a moderator will lock it to ""ävoid confusion" lmfao.

So why not just lock old threads, instead of wasting moderator labour?

[CEO Hunter]

See, I am smarter than Steam management. I have already created efficiency improvement plans

[Mountain Months]

its so threads can be selectively locked without an actual good reason

[Realigo Actual]

Actually my guy I think it's less about old threads than new reports coming in from old threads

[Chika Ogiue]

Not all old threads are considered old at the same time. So automatic closure wouldn't work.
Plus, the resource cost for scanning hundreds of thousands of topics over tens of thousands of forums would effectively slow the forum down so much, it'd be unusable for the duration of the scan. It's safer and more efficient to only close topics when deemed necessary -- which is when people decide to report that new pointless comment in a 5 year old thread.

See, Valve thought of this long before you did.

[CEO Hunter]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Chika Ogiue:

Not all old threads are considered old at the same time. So automatic closure wouldn't work.
Plus, the resource cost for scanning hundreds of thousands of topics over tens of thousands of forums would effectively slow the forum down so much, it'd be unusable for the duration of the scan. It's safer and more efficient to only close topics when deemed necessary -- which is when people decide to report that new pointless comment in a 5 year old thread.

See, Valve thought of this long before you did.

nah they close all threads over a certain time.

My super intelligence is too much for others to comprehend the efficiency

[deborahsimpson]

have u heard of this new feature called democracy?

[Chika Ogiue]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Caravanseray:

nah they close all threads over a certain time.

Except they don't. The forum hides "inactive" topics, it doesn't close them. Such topics can still be found by searching or if you have a link to them. They do this because it has the least impact on performance while also having the benefit of not having to automatically list everything in the database. Again, proving you haven't thought this out at all.

[ペンギン]

Cronjob and topic would be solved. Everything in the database is time-stamped, even with a Unix date in this case. Even Valve Corp should be able to do something like this.

The problem instead begins here:

Searching is key! Before you post a question, use the forum search feature to determine whether your topic has already been covered.

When users take the trouble to find and use old threads that fit their topics, they are criticized for "necro old threads" and they are closed (arbitrarily, especially threads with critical content).

When new threads are opened, users are also criticized for not searching and posting in old threads.

This moronic behaviour has generally spread on the internet since time immemorial and can unfortunately be found everywhere

If moderators were consistent here with

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion

Even threads that currently contain posts in the 4-5 digit range would have to be closed instantly. Moreover, there is no definition of what "old" is. However, like everything else here, intransparent.

What's going on here is just a bit cosmic and I call it "we are here and watching you to fulfill our minimally imposed duty". This is part of legal regulations (DSA, CDA, NetzDG and so on). Well, to be honest, even things like that are not taken seriously.

In addition, the quoted statement by the moderators also implies that the customers on this platform are too stupid. Unfortunately Valve Corporation often does that.

[Wolfpig]

They are not closed automatically because sites assume that their users are not dumb enough to post stuff in such old threads.
Unfortunately they prove them wrong a lot of times.

[Tito Shivan]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Caravanseray:

So why not just lock old threads, instead of wasting moderator labour?

Sometimes manual labor is cheaper than developing a feature. How many bumped threads require locking in a month. 30, 50, 100? Mods can assume that workload.

[Chika Ogiue]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von ペンギン:

Cronjob and topic would be solved.

Which is too resource heavy for this forum; keep in mind different sub forums have different rules on what constitutes when a thread should be closed -- so one simple instruction isn't sufficient. The more complex the instruction and the more tables/rows it has to go through in the database drains more resources and time, and that will impact user experience on the forums at a technical level.

In other words, as I already said, not automatically closing topics and only closing them when it's deemed necessary is best for overall performance.

[ペンギン]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Chika Ogiue:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von ペンギン:

Cronjob and topic would be solved.

Which is too resource heavy for this forum; keep in mind different sub forums have different rules on what constitutes when a thread should be closed -- so one simple instruction isn't sufficient. The more complex the instruction and the more tables/rows it has to go through in the database drains more resources and time, and that will impact user experience on the forums at a technical level.

In other words, as I already said, not automatically closing topics and only closing them when it's deemed necessary is best for overall performance.

Sure, you're right, but since everything is named according to IDs, category names and unique values, that's not really a problem. They also have the professionals and the resources. This is not comparable with "normal" web structures. But who knows what Valve's database actually looks like. It would be quite interesting to have an insight ^^

But overall, that's a topic that no one here can really answer. So it's all just speculation.

[jamiechi]

I would like to know what "quite old" means. How many months is that?
Would be nice to get an official statement from a moderator about this.

[-OrLoK- Слава Україн]

"game hub mod" here. There's no cut off date, its all about the context of the post and how it relates to the thread.

So, sometimes the date is newer, sometimes the date is older.

I can see a host of issues if threads older than X were auto locked for instance.

Sometimes, to the end user, thread closure *will* seem illogical but there's always a reason.

(edit: this is how i run the sub i mod in, yymv!)

[miakisfan]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Chika Ogiue:

Not all old threads are considered old at the same time. So automatic closure wouldn't work.
Plus, the resource cost for scanning hundreds of thousands of topics over tens of thousands of forums would effectively slow the forum down so much, it'd be unusable for the duration of the scan. It's safer and more efficient to only close topics when deemed necessary -- which is when people decide to report that new pointless comment in a 5 year old thread.

See, Valve thought of this long before you did.

While I agree with everything you've said I'd add one more thing ... the posts contain information that would likely be helpful to those who follow.

They aren't meant to be used for posting but to help others.

What really should be happening is important information being place in a sticky post for others to peruse without worry. Then it wouldn't matter if the posts get deleted.

And let me add I mean only those that help others ... the others should be locked or deleted after a certain time. If they are really using A.I. to help moderate then I don;t see how it can't be used in that function as well. Hopefully it will eventually.