I agree here, resurrecting the dead doesn’t help, but neither does closing topics after a mere five days, or even earlier when someone is posting stuff which might derail a thread. Block that person from posting for some days, but keep the thread open for people who are interested in the thread.
In my case, I started this thread: https://discourse.gnome.org/t/using-application-menus-or-not-cross-platform/621, and due to someone it got temporarily shut down for two days, which caused me to not be able to respond.
And now the thread is closed again, not even adhering to the 5 days limit, closing off any discussion about the original topic.
So perhaps the rules can be adjusted a bit? I’m not scanning all forums/mailing lists 24/7, and some suggestions/questions in posts take time to figure out/implement, which might lead to being able to post a proper answer a bit later than the default 5 days.
Long story short: please adjust auto-close to something like a month and rather block/ban persons from a thread than closing the thread.