[Magazine] Closing comments on old articles?

[Paul W. Frields]

On Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 05:41:08PM -0400, Joe Brockmeier wrote:
> On 10/16/2015 02:55 PM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
> > What do other folks think?
> 
> I think 30 days is a bit aggressive. There are also a number of articles
> where a reply after even a year might be useful (e.g. - an article about
> Technology Foo is high in Google Ranking and the piece is outdated and
> better information lives elsewhere now, thus a commenter wants to ensure
> other folks have some idea what is currently true).
> 
> No, I wouldn't expect a reply from an author a long time after a piece
> is published - but that doesn't *necessarily* mean comments will no
> longer have value.
> 
> Older pieces can be a major target for spam, so if this is something we
> need to do in order to retain sanity from moderating spam, then I'd be
> reluctantly +1.

Do you think 90 or 180 days (or some other number) is a more useful
window?  I think we should be open to alternatives -- including not
limiting at all.  I like the idea of doing this by category, so that
non-time limited articles wouldn't be closed as aggressively (or
ever?) compared to, say, specific release-related articles.

Perhaps a good solution might be:

* A shorter window for certain short-lifespan articles --
  e.g. security update for an app, likely subsumed or obsolete within
  a few months (maybe 90 days is as short as it should get?)

* A default window of some period, maybe 180 days

* An unlimited window for concept pieces that will apply for a long
  time (like our upcoming systemd series)

My concern is more about picking up random comments with little value,
as opposed to spam.  As Ryan pointed out elsewhere, we have fairly
decent (sometimes a tad aggressive) spam filtering in place.  There's
a constant pressure on any article comment section to serve as
substitute help forum, often for unrelated topics.  I doubt it does
readers good when we create an expectation their comments will be
answered over a very long span.

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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