Walkhighlands

How about an automatic lock on threads after a certain period of inactivity?
Might stop these really old posts resurfacing (which sometimes can be interesting I'll admit)

Thanks for suggestion. It's something we have considered in the past.

What does anyone else think - should discussion threads be locked after no comments for 6 months or so? We wouldn't lock trip reports as people can always edit their own reports - also many people use the old trip reports to plan their own outings and might want to comment on ones from years ago.

I'd be against, I think - old threads aren't really reappearing often enough to be a nuisance, and it always gives me such an unfriendly feeling when I'm somewhere like Tripadvisor and all the threads are locked.

If there was some way to stop things floating to the top of the pile because of new comments after six months or so, though... comments on old walk reports are still useful to the author and to anyone searching for that hill, but it confuses me to think there's a new report and suddenly find I'm reading a report on a wet summer in the middle of a dry one or whatever, or that I've heard the story before (of course some people just do write reports years later!)

I don't see why you would need to lock them at all. Its not as if the forum, on any given day, is stuffed full of resurrected threads getting in the way. And it can be useful to go back and add a comment to a thread, say a discussion thread on a specific item (like washed away bridge threads) where the situation changes.

I'd vote for retaining old posts. I'm particularly interested in old gear talk posts, but generally I've yet look to at an old post that I thought was of zero interest.

I can't see any reason why we should lock old posts. The forum is not as active as in the past (people swap WH for other social networking sites?) so it is not exactly a huge traffic issue.