On Aug 19, 2020, at 5:14 PM, J_Catlady via groups.io <j.olivia.catlady=gmail.com@groups.io> wrote:

Sounds 100% good to me.

On Aug 19, 2020, at 5:00 PM, JohnF via groups.io <johnf1686=yahoo.com@groups.io> wrote:

Here's my suggestion. If a moderator is actively unlocking a topic that follows the auto-lock rules (via the web), pop up a message indicating that the topic was locked per the rules, and does the moderator wish to exclude the topic from the rules, Yes/No? If No, then it will lock again later that evening. If Yes, it will be excluded from the auto-lock.

If this is being done by email commands, a message could be sent requesting the same answer. If the moderator doesn't respond, that's treated as a No.

If this is being done by API, there could be an optional setting to make it permanent or not as part of the request. If not specified, it defaults to No.

If a topic is excluded from auto-locking, a nondescript message would indicate this when a moderator with locking privileges views the topic on the web, mostly to prevent bug reports ("Hey, why isn't this topic being auto-locked????")

I think that will be the friendliest way to do it. It could also use a #noautolock hashtag, but I don't want to encourage hashtag pollution.

JohnF

--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

On Aug 19, 2020, at 5:00 PM, JohnF via groups.io <johnf1686=yahoo.com@groups.io> wrote:

Here's my suggestion. If a moderator is actively unlocking a topic that follows the auto-lock rules (via the web), pop up a message indicating that the topic was locked per the rules, and does the moderator wish to exclude the topic from the rules, Yes/No? If No, then it will lock again later that evening. If Yes, it will be excluded from the auto-lock.

If this is being done by email commands, a message could be sent requesting the same answer. If the moderator doesn't respond, that's treated as a No.

If this is being done by API, there could be an optional setting to make it permanent or not as part of the request. If not specified, it defaults to No.

If a topic is excluded from auto-locking, a nondescript message would indicate this when a moderator with locking privileges views the topic on the web, mostly to prevent bug reports ("Hey, why isn't this topic being auto-locked????")

I think that will be the friendliest way to do it. It could also use a #noautolock hashtag, but I don't want to encourage hashtag pollution.

JohnF

On Aug 19, 2020, at 8:48 AM, J_Catlady via groups.io <j.olivia.catlady@...> wrote:

No, I think it can legitimately be called an unlocking bug. De minimus, the system should either forbid the attempted unlocking (“this topic has timed out and cannot needs unlocked”) or provide a warning and a confirmation (“are you sure you want to unlock this topic? It has timed out per the group setting and will be relockrf automatically within 24 hours”).

On Aug 19, 2020, at 8:45 AM, Duane <txpigeon@...> wrote:

On Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 10:30 AM, J_Catlady wrote:

Call it a bug with being able to manually unlock a topic.

I wouldn't call it a bug there either.  You know as well as I do that if there were no way to unlock a topic, someone would ask for it because they'd accidentally locked the wrong topic.  Or needed to unlock an old topic that had been auto-locked, as you want to.

Duane

--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

On Aug 19, 2020, at 8:45 AM, Duane <txpigeon@...> wrote:

On Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 10:30 AM, J_Catlady wrote:

Call it a bug with being able to manually unlock a topic.

I wouldn't call it a bug there either.  You know as well as I do that if there were no way to unlock a topic, someone would ask for it because they'd accidentally locked the wrong topic.  Or needed to unlock an old topic that had been auto-locked, as you want to.

Duane

On Aug 19, 2020, at 8:27 AM, J_Catlady via groups.io <j.olivia.catlady@...> wrote:

Right. The alternative, whatever you want to call it ( “never lock topic” is not bad but I’m not crazy about it - maybe “exclude from locking time-out”) could be on the More menu. I don’t care where it is on the UI or how it’s implemented (More menu is fine, if the arrow drop down, doesn’t really matter) but providing the variable is essential for the time-out feature to be actually useful.

On Aug 19, 2020, at 8:19 AM, Duane <txpigeon@...> wrote:

On Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 09:52 AM, J_Catlady wrote:

there should be a different alternative

It sounds like what you want is another option - Never Lock Topic - on the More menu.  Maybe use the lock-open icon to differentiate from the Unlock Topic option that uses the unlock icon.

I believe the current operation is correct, not a bug, in that it operates exactly like it's supposed to - lock anything older than xx days.

Duane

--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

On Aug 19, 2020, at 8:19 AM, Duane <txpigeon@...> wrote:

On Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 09:52 AM, J_Catlady wrote:

there should be a different alternative

It sounds like what you want is another option - Never Lock Topic - on the More menu.  Maybe use the lock-open icon to differentiate from the Unlock Topic option that uses the unlock icon.

I believe the current operation is correct, not a bug, in that it operates exactly like it's supposed to - lock anything older than xx days.

Duane

On Aug 19, 2020, at 7:52 AM, J_Catlady via groups.io <j.olivia.catlady@...> wrote:



Exactly. Turning off the setting is currently the *only* way to selectively unlock timed-out topics, even just one of them, that you want to reopen later, sometimes even much later. For me, this makes the feature unusable.

Of course the behavior is @preferable” to the alternative you propose. But for the feature to be usable over the long term (at least one person in this thread is new to it and hasn’t experienced the problem), there should be a different alternative - the alternative of allowing a topic to be selectively marked as “don’t time me out - have been selected as reopened.” (If that makes that particular topic immune to auto-locking fine. The mod can relock it by hand later if so desired.)

It’s because of this bug (and I’m still calling it a bug) that I eventually had to stop using the feature altogether. And trust me: there will eventually be mods, and probably are some, perhaps many of them, who manually unlock topics and find them locked the next day, think they’re going crazy bdvsuse they remember having locked it and lock it again, etc,  and do this repeatedly before they either report a false bug (“unlocked topic came back locked”) or (less likely) figure out that it’s a locking time-out and report *that* as a bug or a suggestion (as I’ve done before, at least once), or quit using the feature. Or resign themselves to the inconvenient truth that kicked topics are locked forever.

On Aug 19, 2020, at 6:21 AM, Bruce Bowman <bruce.bowman@...> wrote:

On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 11:21 PM, J_Catlady wrote:

It does not allow a moderator to manually unlock any topic that times out. If you unlock it by day, the feature [sic] goes back in that night like a sneaky little thief and locks it again based on the timestamp. This is a serious downside, if not actually a bug (I would call it one).

J -- Go back into settings, turn it back off, and your unlocked topics will remain unlocked.

I believe this behavior is preferable to having multiple topics mysteriously fail to lock when you change the group setting, for no other reason that you manually locked/unlocked them at some time in the past. Be careful what you wish for. 

Regards,
Bruce

--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu