I would like to request that the auto-locking feature of Discourse be removed from this forum because there are many threads listed in the latest activity feed that are locked. Also I found a thread in the search (about Epiphany) that is something I wanted to comment on but it was locked. I just don’t think the auto-locking feature is all that useful for this forum at the current time. At some point, maybe it would be but just now it seems like it just gets in the way of discussion.
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The autolocking is set at 30 days, up from the previously set 14 days. Considering the traffic on this site, 30 days is perfectly fine.
If you want to answer a question in a locked topic, then you can flag the topic and ask for it to be re-opened: I am happy to do that.
If you want to continue a discussion that has run its course, then you should open a new topic.
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Please, are you certain?
I see, below your post:
This topic will close 14 days after the last reply.
For all categories other than Site Feedback it’s a month. (And for Infrastructure it doesn’t auto-close.)
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The limit is set per category; the Site Feedback category is not really meant to be used for long running topics.
Every other category has a 30 days auto lock limit.
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@jakedane @ebassi thanks for the explanations.
Retrospective, defocusing from GNOME: my experience of auto-locking in Google Groups (probably long before Discourse existed) was that – for technical discussions, a majority of which were naturally extensive – the automation caused more problems than it solved. Without going into detail: fragmentation and duplication were horrible. Eventually, the flaws were recognised – restrictions were eased – however by then, much damage had been done.
Fast-forward, to the present: I trust the people with knowledge of the GNOME communities to do what’s best here 
Happily, Discourse is not so brutal in its fragmentation …
- select
- quote
- cut
- paste to wherever you want to comment.
An example, quoting from a 2019 post:
From my (limited) experience of setting up a forum with Discourse:
- I might expect the smoothest ride to result from not twiddling the knobs excessively
– if a default setting feels deeply inappropriate, think long and hard about reasons for the feeling, before any major twiddle.
Three years … was probably more than long enough 
Enjoy!
… and @MichaelTunnell here’s a screenshot of the link that automatically appears in the locked topic:
A useful feature of Discourse is that you can merge two or more topics into one. This means that if you create a new topic as a continuation of a closed one, a person with high enough trust level can take the comments in the new topic and seamlessly move them into the old one. This should reduce fragmentation.
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I particularly like this:
Simple
Thanks again
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