Make old threads read-only after a period of inactivity

[Cynric]

This is directed to the moderatiors.

Can you ask the technical people who manage the forum software if it would be possible to automatically make threads become "locked" (read only) after a period of inactivity please? We are seeing a number of bogus postings lately which contain things that are anti-social or blatant advertising.

[Thomas_H]

That isn't an option unfortunately. We have recently taken some steps to limit some of the scam posters we get. People would post a seemingly normal thread to bypass the spam filter and then edit their post with a link. We restricted the time to edit a post to try and combat this.

[AnnS]

Yes @Thomas_H , the spammers can no longer edit but are returning to the thread replying with 

'I got this followed by the spam link' this is usually to get some free advertising to some spam or scammers chat room.

The spam filter should block these replies but it's not working.

[Thomas_H]

We can try to see if there's anything else we can do. If you could send 2-3 obvious examples to the CC lounge I can certainly ask the question. 

[Cynric]

Thank you @AnnS  and @Thomas_H  for thinking about this. There have been a few recently in the "Home broadband & landline" section. 

[AnnS]

Most certainly @Cynric , I just reported one of the threads you mention where the first post was edited with two spam links, I believe it was @Jayach who mentioned having a spam sandwich.

[AnnS]

@Cynric 

Did you mean old threads going back a few years where the replies are no longer relevant to stop the thread being updated?

[Cynric]

@AnnS Yes, that's the general idea. On the developer site GitHub, for example, I believe that they lock after six months of inactivity.

[AnnS]

Certainly a good point for forum feedback @Cynric @Thomas_H misunderstood your question.

@Mark 

[Mark]

Hi all, I can certainly reach out to the forum developers and ask if that is possible. I believe we can manually block replies to a thread, but I'm not 100% sure if we have the option to add a time limit to do the same automatically.