Airtable Forum Feedback - Disable auto-closing of topic, it's rude and unnecessary

[Ambroise_Dhenai]

Small feedback to the Airtable Forum support team, please disable the auto-lock of topics.

It often “ticks” at a bad time, and serves little purpose. I’ve been stuck against that wall reading many topics where I wanted to add valuable information, or ask for more precision.

Also, it can be “rude”, such as in:

• Pricing and usage limits for sync - #5 by DavidVM

I’d love to know how the community feels about this. :slightly_smiling_face:

[ScottWorld]

I agree! When new solutions become available for old problems, it makes it impossible to go back and alert the people in that thread that a new solution is now available!

And for new users who are visiting the forum for the first time search through old posts, they are often left empty-handed or they often feel like the problem they were searching for is still unsolvable.

@Jason @Taylor_Savage @Rose_K @Adam_Minich

[Adam_Minich]

Hello @Ambroise_Dhenain and @ScottWorld,

Adam from Airtable here. Thanks for pointing this out and getting a conversation going.

We feel there is a purpose to closing out threads as it allows better tracking of what is open and needs attention versus what may now be outdated (even if it may still be relevant). Currently, there is a 3 day auto-close window for topics where a solution has been found. We are less inclined to adjust that window. That said, we are open to extending the window to a longer time period for other topics where a solution has not yet been found, since the 15 day auto-close was a somewhat arbitrary number.

Additionally, we do offer the ability to flag a post. You can choose the “Something Else” option which will alert our team to take action.

This means that if you find something is worth reopening, then you can provide us the context to reopen the topic so that new and valuable information or questions can be added.

@Community_Leaders

[Ambroise_Dhenai]

Interesting, unfortunately I believe most people will simply not ask for a topic to be re-opened.

We feel there is a purpose to closing out threads as it allows better tracking of what is open and needs attention versus what may now be outdated.

Doesn’t “answered” topics help with that already? As long as a topic is answered, then it should be enough to consider it “not active anymore”, while still allowing new information being posted.

I wonder if the auto-closing of topics is really efficient to achieve that goal. It feels unnecessary to me, but I might not see the whole picture.