While this is true, and I agree with it, and there is plenty of historical precedent in terms of the Boing category working this way from day one… were there a lot of problems with users (new, spam, or otherwise) resurrecting old community created topics with new replies?
This is 100% not my call to make but I do believe promoting a few reliable community folks to TL4 might be helpful as well. Communities should be somewhat self-managing.
I spoke with @codinghorror who needs more information about the nature of this change.
FWIW, I understand that because we’re now locking all topics, something previously limited only to boing topics, that the chance that someone will reply as a new topic has increased - and that the issue, then, is that all watchers of the previous topic won’t be notified. I still think that’s a pretty small edgecase, but I do understand it 
Would there be a notification put at the bottom of the closed thread saying continued on this new thread.
Yes, that already happens.
It’s more about notifying people who have opted to watch a thread.
This is a very very slippery slope. For reference this issue has never come up, not even once, in the entire history of Discourse. So I fear we are imagineering a solution to a problem that does not really exist, which is “when I create a new topic will anyone notice?”
I could see making the case that the topic creator and the post owner should both be notified when someone replies as a linked topic. But every single person who watches that topic? That’d get spammy as hell right quick in a hurry.
Funny this thread came on my radar today, as I came across something I thought might be nice for the Judaism thread, and went and saw that it closed a mere 4 hours earlier. After an entire year I finally see something I might post and d’oh missed it by this much.
Some topics simply don’t come up often, but the regulars remember they are there and might enjoy it coming up. Who doesn’t enjoy a good resurrection now and again?
Maybe #lounge topics could be exempted since spammers wouldn’t be able to mess with topics there.
Yes @orenwolf he has a good idea. Or you could make it MUCH longer in the #lounge category like a year with nobody replying → auto close.
See, I told you the community can solve its own problems! 
P.s. ficuswhisperer for president 2020
I thought about that, but when I looked at past lounge topics, I noticed most are either short and peter out, or looooooooooong running ones that are active (like, the lounge!)
I think I’d rather keep everything the same for now (for simplicity), but if we see a ton of topics being closed in the lounge or something we can always revisit. 
@stinkinbadgers That’s a great reason to reply as a new topic for a post like that, if your goal is to restart the conversation, versus just post one additional message in it.
No, it has come up. It happened to me several times after the switch to Discourse, which is why I started to look into the issue and why I brought it up several years ago.
It is has continued to happen with enough regularity in the last three years that I still think it’s worth addressing.
Edit:
Maybe not a notification then? How about bumping the original locked thread so that it shows up at the top of a user’s Unread page?
It seems like the minimum change from the old status quo that would address the stated problem would just be to prevent TL0 and TL1 users from posting in topics which have been dormant for a month or more …
I like this idea.
Yes but that would take a fair bit of new code. Simply letting lounge topics stay open for, say, 4 months past the last post is already possible today.
But if he liked the top shelf, and had a cast iron liver . . . potentially still profitable.
Well I’ll be damned. You may be the only person who brought it up, but from wayyy back in the mists of 2013…
So whenever someone does reply as linked topic, the linked topic is bumped? I think my original proposal is better: notify both the post owner and the topic owner that someone linked a new topic to them. Obviously if the linked post is the first post, it’s the same person.
+1 to that idea.
It’s so-so, I am not fully convinced that the topic owner is necessarily gonna care that someone linked as new topic to reply 62 out of 140 in their topic… my main goal is to avoid a notifications explosion that’s kind of exploitable.
You think that many people tend to explicitly watch a topic?
Sorry, I should have been more clear: I meant both. The topic owner should get a notification of a reply to the thread because it’s a reply. That the reply had to be the start of a new thread doesn’t stop it from being a reply. I mean, maybe I’ve stopped caring about the topic weeks ago, or maybe my specific inquiry never got answered properly and I’d be grateful to have another response.
In addition, users who are watching the topic either because they participated in the thread or because they explicitly decided to watch it should see the original topic bumped up on their Unread page because a reply to the original topic is activity on the original topic.
Pardon me for addressing someone elses question, but in this instantiation of Discourse, I’d guess probably not.
If I were to have a lot to say about the etymology and use of the word ‘start’, and replied to you as a linked topic instead of here and now, it would not be a reply to this thread or its author. I don’t think the author of this topic can be assumed to want to know that I started an unrelated conversation about etymology or whatever.
I think after 30 days a conversation is passed on. No need to call out to other people who have moved on. Plenty of attention to be got by the people showing up here to converse, just by being on the list of active topics.
my 2c. thanks again.
