[Pending] Non-intrusive reminder about the age of a thread

I've reported a few threads lately, all of which were pretty similar in nature: questions the OP asks and then NEVER responds to, and despite the thread being many months old, people are still fruitlessly engaging.

for example: Home repair (posted in February, zero OP engagement since, still getting bumped)

I propose some sort of non-intrusive reminder for would-be commenters who are composing their reply: something that surfaces the age of the thread in or around the reply textbox fields.

It could come in the form of placeholder text in the reply text field or it could be a small footer message below the text field. Whichever, the message would be something like "This thread is 252 day(s) old."

It's not an aggressive action like auto-locking threads, nor annoying validation pop-ups to add friction to posting. Just a subtle reminder that the thread is old in hopes that a user might realize the thread is dead, and provide meaningful engagement elsewhere.

 

Just report the thread and staff will close it. I do this all the time. Not sure if this would be an easy coding/Xenforo implementation anyways.

No support.

 

Support!

 

Would be extremely easy to code

 

In that case, I like this idea:

“It could come in the form of placeholder text in the reply text field or it could be a small footer message below the text field saying. Whichever, the message would be something like "This thread is 252 day(s) old."

However, I don’t think it should list the thread’s age, but rather the time that has passed since the last post.

 

I like that idea - placeholder text until you click and then it disappears once you do so. Could be used for threads more than 100 days old or so.

 

Agreed. Personally, I think something along the 60 day mark would be perfect.

 

We will look into this for the XF 2.0 transition but no guarantees for now - moved to pending