When you could have started a new topic, linking back to the original topic, instantly.
I'm sorry you chose to wait 4 hours, but that isn't really reason to complain given the number of times we've explained our position.
Against that you have to consider the fact that I have lost track of the number of times I have replied to posts, generally by newcomers, who have added a question to the end of a thread a year or more old, where the new question is only vaguely related to the original, or even if it is related the original post is so old that any content is way out of date. My reply is usually to ask them to start a new thread. There are a lot of old threads still open as they date from before the auto close strategy was enabled. I think all of those here who have been long time contributors will have had similar experiences.
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Hi @Paul-Reed. I am a little bit confused about the closing. Perhaps I mistakenly marked my thread as resolved to trigger its closing, but there was activity just hours before it auto-closed. Can anybody take a look at the thread to see if it was something that I caused? Was it based on the category?
Hi @knolleary, I will admit that I felt a little weird opening a 2nd thread to continue the 1st. It seemed like I was being spammy and obnoxiously self-promoting and almost didn't post it for those reasons. I guess we are just used to other forums where the moderators would likely give us a good scolding for that "double posting" type of behavior. As long as this is the preferred way, then that is what I will do.
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There will always be exceptions, and that's where flagging for a moderator to unlock is perfectly valid. But equally, we want to be mindful that if a thread is being kept open endlessly with 100s of replies, then it has probably strayed off its origin topic and could have been "reset" to a new topic with a more apt title many times. That helps new users searching on topics to find what they are looking for.
What we don't want to do is to be unlocking topics because someone wants to ask a vaguely related question. We get that a lot and costs us much more time trying to get users to ask their own question in their own topic.
Marking a response as a solution will kick in the short close timer. I would expect that to still keep open if people still post, but I can't claim to know that for sure. I've no doubt the Discourse docs will answer that point. The idea of marking something as the solution is intended for more Q&A categories that once a query has been answered then no more back and forth is needed. I have to admit, if I see a topic I've not read and it shows it already has an answer, I'm less likely to read it unless the topic is of particular interest as, presumably, my help isn't needed anymore.
ah yes - there is an extra tickbox we forgot to tick on that category
so it was 60 days from start - not from last post...
- Now ticked
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So that was the problem. The whole topic was long but also rather advanced. I felt anyway comfortable as I do believe others, deeply involved in that topic, was as well. We had it all in one place. Now we soon have to go "digging" in two places if we need to refresh/check something from earlier
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yes that's what I meant here:
I agree with you on what you say. For those who share nodes / flow: let them master whether or not to close their topic.
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Ok - we can leave those channels open as indeed they are more owned by the author of the node/project. We will leave the auto close in place for all the more general channels where everyone is involved and the volume is quite high. As previously noted we are more than happy to re-open a thread if it makes sense.
Also in this case I have merged Kevin's new thread back with the old and re-opened it, so that is now all back in one place.
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One final note - moderators are still likely to close threads that are going off-topic after a long gap in responses.
I've finally found out the trick, how to do that easily:
It's hidden under the (tiny gray "8"-symbol) SHARE button !
The big [ Share ] does not work this way.
It would be great if the "auto closed blabla..." text would be enhanced with a hint to this button.
Of course it's not so good, like reopening the whole topic, but it's 1 step forward. 
Question:
If someone is clicking that +New Topic link, is the author of the original message getting a notification by email?
(Because the end goal would be to alert everyone in the old topic, but at least the starter.)
I was about to open a new Q on this issue, but got cross-referenced to this one (which is in a minority with autoclose disabled).
This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply.
One of the ways I try to maximise content reuse is to search existing content, and if an existing thread is a good match, then to post a codicil rather than starting a new topic. I also try to promulgate this as good practice on the forums that I help administer.
As has been pointed out in the above discussions auto-close isn't a Discourse constraint, but rather a configurable option in the Admin interface. Other forums such as the StackOverflow family positively discourage reasking a Q that has already been asked, and the power users can close such Qs as 'already covered" and redirect to the appropriate existing topic. So frequent users rapidly learn to search first and only raise a new Q if they can't find an existing answer.
People just aren't going to contact the mods/admins to request opening an old topic, so you are going to get some level of repetition. I feel that your policy encourages, this, and that the SO way is better.
Just a thought 
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- indeed our experience was exactly the opposite - see previous replies in this thread - Reopen Topics / Reply to closed topic - #6 by knolleary - which is why we turned on the auto-close for most channels. Some people do ask us to reopen topics (but indeed only rarely) - and they can still link to a previous discussion if it is still relevant.
I totally agree with @TerryE
Our time is limited in RL.
- we do not ask to reopen topics,
- and wait until it's done, (if it's done at all!)
- just to share a solution.
This way we DO NOT share, do not add, to not follow.
It's basically kills the very concept of this whole discourse forum. Everyone is just asking and forgetting about, because it gets auto-closed.
I can count in my head at least 6 times in the last 2 years this happened to me:
- I tried to share something important I have encountered, but the topic I remembered was already closed.
And it is fully logical, that we do not work with NR every 2 weeks.
But rather once in every 1-2 month or even only 1-2 years at Christmas...
for example:
- Currently we have ca 3 active and 2 closed topics about "NR on Bookworm".
When I have searched, did not know which one I should continue. The most logical one was already closed (within 14 days).
Insane...
What's wrong with starting a new topic?
We ask users to do that for a number of reasons, one of which is that users initially think that they have the same problem, but in reality it transpires to be something quite different, and the topic then veers off in a different direction to the original topic.
This topic was automatically closed after 6 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
