Giulia
Great questions and thoughts. I've spent a lot of time thinking over this well before this so hopefully this will offer some methodology behind my thinking.
There is not a way to affect the skinning of this aspect of the community bring more attention specifically to the date. Some things are just locked down and have little room for customization. Even if we were able to do so I don't think that it would catch most people's eyes as new members don't look for that sort of thing. And when you have multiple things on a page that you emphasize it creates a blur and people don't focus on anything. Most of people's participation is via their phone so compact it on a little screen and it's an even bigger challenge.
If they come from a Google search and land on page 15 of 34 they're not necessarily going to find the first post and realize when the blog/discussion was started years ago. Each post does have a timestamp of when it was created so hopefully they notice that. Again, it's not something that we can modify to be glaringly obvious even in the comments.
Locking all posts older than a certain date really isn't a solution either as a member might find their way to us based on something they found through a search. If it's locked but they want to comment on it, they may just get frustrated and not realize that it's locked and decide not to join. Additionally if we automatically locked and archived things older than a certain date it would do so whether the content was actively being commented on or not as it is based on date of creation and not date of last activity. If there was something based on date of last activity that would be a different story.
Even if the original author is not active there are often other people who are active and will get notified when the discussion is commented on. It is often those people, like you, who were active on the older discussion who are notified and were really the ones helping and would offer support to a new person who identifies with the post. People who have gone dormant aren't notified. Rarely do those old posts have 0 active members on them, especially the ones that were really active. The ones with 1-3 comments that are really old may not have any active members but those are also the ones less likely to show up in a Google search. I've also seen people comment on an old post because they saw it didn't have an answer and felt the person should get one even if it was really old. It also gives a lurker an answer if they happen to stumble across the site and they also see that people care about giving answers, even really old posts. When comparing to a new blog post, those posts have 0 people who are notified so the person commenting on an old post is actually in a better position (statistically speaking) to get a response than someone posting a new blog. It's not guaranteed either way however.
I do look through to see what content was created in the past but still contributes to a lot of incoming traffic. By marking things as archived it would likely be deprioritized by Google and might send the person to another site on the web instead of ours.
With the recent issues with the original blog widget, I've changed the blog widget on the home page(temporarily) and put in a different one that shows any blogs with recent activity. You can't tell unfortunately which ones ones are new ones vs old ones and therefore the newer ones aren't standing out for having 0 comments. This is problematic and hopefully the other widget will get fixed. In the interim it is helping when old blogs are commented on that others see that it has become active again. From the older blogs I have seen some cases people have asked for help while others were just adding in that the blog was helpful or that they identified with the blog. It's not always that the person is asking for support, none the less I share your concern for someone who might reach out for help in an old blog and may not get a response. It's possible with any post, new or old. I worry the most about posts with obscure titles.
To me it's great that someone was motivated to participate. If they feel comfortable first commenting on someone else's content to start participating and then gain the courage to post their own topic that's great. For some people, getting the courage to start a topic and be on a podium when they may be in a fragile state may be too much. Rather, I want to people to feel comfortable interacting in whatever way they first choose too. I don't want to discourage a new member to not post on anything old if that is the way they want to start their journey. We shouldn't ask why they did that or inform them that it's an old topic as they'll feel they've done something wrong and never come back. I want their first experience to be as positive as possible. I have had people ask to disable their account the same day they created their account because they felt they had done something wrong when they had mustarded up the courage to join and participate because they needed guidance or they observed someone else's comment was questioned based on the date of the blog/discussion they participated in was started.
JACKIE1-25-15 and kristen-9.7.15 Yes since I commented on it it temporarily jumped back up on the list. I was trying to spread awareness about the upcoming bonfire next weekend. and there are a couple old bonfires that get a lot of views each month and also have a fair amount of members that still have active accounts though they may not have participated in a while. By commenting I hoped that they would join in the upcoming bonfire.
Mark
EX Community Manager
EX Community Admin Team
