
Ask HN: What is the logic behind closing comments after certain period - kodisha
I see this becoming a trend on some major sites, but it just feels wrong. Actually, in my experience, I was able to get information many times after posting on a old thread, because, things change, and people get new knowledge &#x2F; perspective on the subject.
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corobo
The more threads you have the more resources are required for moderation. If
comments were enabled for every single thread on an old enough site they'd
need entire teams just to keep the spammy comments out.

When threads are closed you have a lot less moderation work to do to keep the
site from being infested with spammy outbound links

It's unfortunate but the value of the odd one or two people commenting on an
old post isn't great enough to outweigh the need to easily keep the site spam
free for many sites

~~~
stefantalpalaru
You need to automate most spam filtering, instead of relying on humans for all
of it. Something like bogofilter works very well after some training.

~~~
codingdave
And then spammers beat the automation and you need to update again... playing
that game takes effort, too. Much easier to just close comments.

~~~
krapp
Easier still to have old threads auto-delete after a certain length, time or
time since last comment, similar to the way they do on imageboards.

------
mei0Iesh
News only lasts 24 hours before it's replaced with the next topic. Most
activity occurs on the front page items, as you can see by clicking "new" at
the top of this site.

But that's people. Spam bots scan sites for open comment forms, and having
them on every old page increases the attack surface. Usually the only comments
on old pages are tons of spam gibberish.

One method sites rely on for anti-spam detection are user reports. But since
the humans only pay attention to the new content, the spam is hidden on the
old pages, where web spiders index it, and then consider the entire site as
spam.

So sites will close old comment forms to prevent spam bots from flooding old
pages nobody looks at anymore.

There are a few other reasons people might do that, like on some sites people
get into a heated back-and-forth that lasts beyond the 24 hours, where
although nobody else visits that page anymore, 2 people are replying to each
other for days or weeks later. By closing it, they're preventing people from
doing that.

------
kazinator
Replying to old threads is so unwanted, it has an ugly name: "necroposting".
It's such a nuisance that every viable online forum has configuration to
prevent it.

When any thread can be resurrected, it's like a Hydra that can grow a new head
out of its ass, not just recently chopped neck!

:)

Trolls and spammers love to necropost. Trolls do it to annoy. Spammers do it
because they are finding postings automatically based on keywords, and don't
care about the date of what they are following up.

The quality of necro-postings is almost invariably very, very low.

Even when it is done honestly by a non-trolling user, someone who replies
without looking at the date of what they are replying to demonstrates low
intelligence, which raises the probability that they are going to post
something of low quality.

~~~
tedmiston
Related: Stack Overflow gives a necromancer badge for successfully answering
an old question.
[http://stackoverflow.com/help/badges/17/necromancer](http://stackoverflow.com/help/badges/17/necromancer)

~~~
kazinator
On the other hand, Stack Overflow sites also have a "late answers" review
category/queue for moderators: new answers to old questions (posted by new
users).

[http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/148088/why-are-
late-...](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/148088/why-are-late-answers-
reviewed)

------
frou_dh
If people get entrenched in long-term comment exchanges then they have less
need to keep a-checkin' the publication's new output for sustenance (and so
won't be looking at what the editors would prefer them to look at).

~~~
pheroden
An ad eyeball is an ad eyeball. I'd need to see some very solid metrics
showing that eyeballs on old pages aren't as good as new.

~~~
frou_dh
Say we limit this to juicy "native advertising". Then you actually have to
read new articles to be advertised to because ads come your way dressed as
articles.

------
hamhamed
It also feels wrong on an SEO level. Google likes fresh content, and whenever
a thread gets bumped (new comment) Google ranks it better.

Here's the trap though: What happens if someone bumps an old thread from 2011?
A lot of ppl assume that this is fresh content on the frontpage and will skip
reading the date and might be misinformed. The probability that information
will be current staggers in time.

A simple UX fix can warn the user that the thread is from 2011 or the thread
has been "bumped".

------
brudgers
StackOverflow avoids this by not being a "discussion". To a first
approximation, anyone can edit any question or answer to make corrections. It
works because there is a [reasonably] clear set of standards and a close
alignment between content and user interests...so long as those interests are
not "I want to talk about X".

It also works because of strong community moderation and a well thought out
structure, e.g. bespoke software.

------
gonyea
\- Spammers, I mean "SEO consultants," can't dig up old content with no
eyeballs and have their way with it. (#1)

\- It's much harder to keep a community engaged on what's happening now if
they feel like they have to patrol comment threads for articles that mean a
lot to them.

\- Either it's worth saying now or it's not worth saying.

------
iwalton3
Comment threads likely close because they are archiving the data into some
format that is harder to modify but easier to serve. (For instance, rendering
the thread to HTML and saving that.) It doesn't make sense to store comments
in unarchived form after people are done talking about the topic.

------
an_ko
I asked about this on Community Building SE a while ago and got good answers.
[http://communitybuilding.stackexchange.com/q/711/530](http://communitybuilding.stackexchange.com/q/711/530)

------
kyriakos
I recently noticed that a lot of large sites have comments hidden by default,
needing the user to click on a button for them to appear. Is there any reason
for that other than mobile friendliness? Feels bad for SEO to me.

~~~
Mandatum
The comments are still captured by search engines for popular frameworks like
Wordpress, however sites that don't use those technologies aren't subject to
the same advantage. Google will only make allowances where the tech used it
popular enough, or the dev community is loud enough to warrant changes to
their crawler.

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j45
Maybe a certain level of karma would let one comment to increasingly older
posts.

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s3b
It could be for performance reasons - maybe there's an in-memory cache with
only the recent threads kept in it. Commenting on an old discussion would
involve loading the thread from disk which would be expensive. Hence comments
on old threads are disabled.

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tangled_zans
How long does it take for comments in an HN thread to become closed?

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DanBC
A useful trolling technique is to find a heated thread from a year ago. The
day and month date stamp will be the same. You post something to bump the
thread, and watch as people don't bother to read the timestamp and get sucked
into fresh arguments.

~~~
iends
That's kind of a weak argument because the inverse can be said about good
technical discussions.

------
rocky1138
It's anti-user but pro moderator as it takes less effort to moderate a smaller
number of open threads.

The most egregious form of this I've seen is Chromium bugs being left open but
people being advised to create a new one if the existing one is too old.

