Why are forum posts locked after two months of inactivity?

Yes, it is annoying. That's not the case on SO…

But a problem is that very few close the thread once they've got the answer they needed. May be a reason.

I would advise you to file a bug (please report FB ref) and then… to close the thread.

Note that you can also set the bell, to be notified as soon there is a new post in the thread.

Claude31 wrote:

I would advise you to file a bug (please report FB ref)

Agreed.

Alecazam wrote:

Some of my posts are less than 1 month old?

So you’re saying that you found a thread locked even though it hadn’t been idle for 2 months? And there’s no indication that a moderator locked it? If so, that’s definitely worth a separate bug report. Your first bug should be against the stated policy and your second should be that the forums isn’t following that policy.

Please make sure to post the bug numbers here, just for the record.

Share and Enjoy
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Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

Hi Quinn,

These were the post that said were locked for inactivity or "deemed necessary by a moderator" after 1 month.

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/676483
https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/675995

Threads should never be locked. That is just obnoxious!

Think about all the obscure problems that take multiple iOS or Xcode cycles to resolve... They could help someone years down the road, or someone may find it after a Swift language update, and then need to answer the question with a new method or API. Even if a question is resolved/answered satisfactorily now, a deprecated solution may need revision in 2/3/4/5 years.

Simply locking it after a set amount of time, or resolution, just makes the forum so much less of a problem-solving space compared to industry standards like Stack Overflow.💁🏻‍♀️

@Shoko
You should file a bug report. There is effectively a big need to improve this forum which does not provide the needed capabilities and creates useless constraints.

You should file a bug report.

Indeed. And please post the bug number here, just for the record.

Share and Enjoy
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Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

I ran this past the DevForums team and there’s definitely something wonky going on here )-: We’re still investigating the issue (r. 78107158) but I’m hopeful that we’ll see some improvements in this space.

Thanks for bringing it up!

Share and Enjoy
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Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

Hi Quinn,
Thanks, good news. Would be great if they could profit of it to correct other annoying issues too:

• impossibility to correct an erroneously marked Correct answer

• 1 hour limit to modify a post or impossibility to delete a post (at least when there is no answer to it).

• FB8801974 seemed solved, but visibly not (when marking one's own answer as correct)

I’m hopeful that we’ll see some improvements in this space

OK, so here’s how that panned out…

The expected behaviour of DevForums is that threads should only be locked by a moderator. In no cases should a thread be locked due to inactivity.

We’ve update our log message to make that clear. It now says:

This thread has been locked by a moderator.

The issue reported by Alecazam, where threads were locking due to inactivity, was definitely a bug and we believe that we’ve fixed it. Certainly, the specific threads they referenced in their second post are now unlocked.

We also had a bug were posts were spontaneously unlocking! O-: We believe we’ve fixed that too.

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Claude31, The issues you raised an unrelated to Alecazam’s issue. I believe that some of them are fixed with yesterday’s DevForums release but, if not, put the details in a new thread and I’ll take a look.

Make sure to tag it with Forums Feedback so that I see it.

Share and Enjoy
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Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

Awesome Quinn. Thanks for looking into it, and I'm glad it was just a bug. The forums are really a great resource.

Thanks for the recommendation to file bug reports. However, here it's stated that you can give feedback here in the forum as well

I think the folks who wrote that are just trying to make more work for me (-:

Seriously though, I’ve been trying to get that fixed [1] for a while now (r. 68492401). I’ll redouble my efforts.

Oh, I was at least able to get the Forums Feedback tag description fixed (r. 67463434), so it now says:

Ask questions about how to use the Apple Developer Forums. Discuss forums bugs and enhancements requests that you’ve filed via Feedback Assistant.

which is, IMO, the correct advice.

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And where in the feedback assistant do I find "Developer forum"?? I can not find it!

That’s a good question. And it’s another thing I’ve been trying to get sorted out (r. 78944587). For the moment you should choose Developer Tools > Something else not on this list.

Share and Enjoy
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Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

[1] Well, specifically the text in the Feedback section of Apple Developer > Support > Developer Forums.

Thanks Quinn for being our go between with the development team. Precious help each time.