RFE: automatically archive questions with certain tags after non-activity

[mattdm]

Q&A sites can serve two functions: a knowledge base for general information, and a troubleshooting tool, often very user-specific.

Stack Exchange deals with this by basically forbidding the latter. We don't necessarily want to do this on an Askbot sites — for many, troubleshooting is the primary use. However, this leads to a lot of clutter, which is hard to wade through. So, the RFE is:

Posts which have tags matching a list (including wildcards) are automatically moved to an "archived" state after 6 months without activity. "Activity" would include answers, edits, votes on the question or its answers, or questions being marked as duplicates (assuming that feature were to be implemented).

I'm on the fence as to whether archived posts could be interacted with — this could either bring them back to active state, or they could be disabled from any interaction and users who find them encouraged to ask new questions if they need something further.

[mattdm]

The tag could be something like "troubleshooting", or admins could manually add tags for old versions of software when that software hits EOL. That way, the main question list remains relevant.

[evgenyfadeev]

"move to archive" feature can be implemented independently of tags. Using tags as proxy would require implementing "admin tag" feature (non-deletable by regular or low-reputation users and one that can be applied even if max allowed tag count is reached). Once "admin tag" is there it can trigger auto-archiving after some time elapses on the question.

[mattdm]

You're right, this would totally be implementable without the tags part.

Separating by tags would be convenient but not necessary. An inverse (and maybe better) way to do this would be to have a list of tags exempt from archiving (so, for example, one could list current software releases). If someone insists on retagging a post inaccurately to keep it from being archived... well, there's other ways to deal with that. :)

[evgenyfadeev]

I'm trying to think - what would "archived" state do? What comes to mind is "hidden" from most users, but for some reason valuable to be saved. There is "deleted" state now which works like trashbin, stuff accumulates there and eventually may be discarded (although this is not implemented at he moment). Any comments, @mattdm or anyone else?

[mattdm]

I'm thinking it would be normally hidden, but browsable if you choose to go to the archive link, and searchable if you enable an option to search it (check a box or go to the archive section and search from there). Also, existing URLs should still work.

Archived items would have a notice saying "This is an archived post and may no longer be relevant."

As noted above, either

1. You can't edit, comment on, or answer archived posts, but there is a "re-activate this post" button which takes it out of the archive (available to users above a rep threshold), or

2. Any action taken on the post un-archives it. Possibly with a "this will move this post out of the archive - are you sure it's not better to post an all-new item instead" warning.