Locked Topics
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Why are so many topics marked as locked (some have only a few posts, and have not been solved)?
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examples?
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Usually they will be old topics that haven't been active in a long time (the lock is I believe automatic). It is to stop people resurrecting old threads with something as vague as "I have this problem too" when their problem isn't the same.
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A couple times a year we manually run a SQL update to lock every thread that hasn't been posted to in at least several months. There was way too much "I have this problem too" resurrecting threads from several years prior that were never actually the same problem. Keeps thread hijacking minimized, and forcing people not to hijack and start their own thread is best for actually getting them useful help. Lots of people don't understand that, so we force it.
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If something is actually relevant, someone can click 'report post' and ask a mod to unlock the topic. (Or start a fresh thread to ask about it, and link back to the old thread)
It's fairly rare, but we have had people come back months/years later to update a forgotten thread they started or were talking on to share a final resolution or workaround. In that case, one of us unlocks the thread and they can post in it no problem…
Occasionally we'll go back and edit a locked thread if it turns up high in Google searches for a particular topic as well, to lead people to better/more accurate info. In those cases if the thread were unlocked it would probably get a lot of irrelevant posts that would be better served by new threads.
