The comments field in the post table gets set to 'closed' for all posts, and commenting options change from those set

[linusinutah]

these problems are documented in this forum topic. ​http://wordpress.org/support/topic/why-is-my-comments-closed-in-all-posts-open-in-all-pages?replies=13#post-1768692

It has happened to me twice

[kawauso]

Some general ideas or steps to reproduce are needed really. It's unclear whether this is actually due to a faulty plugin or theme otherwise.

[linusinutah]

Based upon the comments in the forum topic cited, it doesn't seem to be plugin or theme related, but you can't prove a negative. And to make matters worse, no one has been able to force the error to reproduce. The best clue we have at this time is that the resetting of the "Discussion" parameters occurs at the same time that the "Comment Status" field in the Posts table are all set to "Closed". Where is there code in WordPress that might cause both of these things to happen?

[dd32]

Changing these options would not affect previous posts settings in the database.

WordPress does not update the discussion settings elsewhere, Thats only done by the options panel.

More information is needed to reproduce the problem.. Does it happen "often" on the same host? Ie. does the settings change every day? Once a month? Randomly when a Blue moon is high and a wolf howls? (ie. it doesn't happen often, just changed once..)

Also, for the purpose of this ticket, can you please summarize the forum thread problem, reproduction steps, and anything which has been ruled out? Linking to an active forum thread for a problem is not very helpful and leads to tickets being less concise.

[linusinutah]

It happens to me roughly once a week. It has happened twice and we have had our site open for about three weeks.

In the Forum this same problem is reported by several users. They use different providers, and report having removed all plug-ins and themes, and the problem still occurs (It is not clear whether it is just that the symptoms that are still there or the problem actually occurred when plug-ins had been removed.)

The option fields which get reset are
"Users must be registered and logged in to comment "
"An administrator must always approve the comment "

The forum also mentions that this happens only on posts and not on pages. I never checked this personally.

[linusinutah]

Further, no one reports on the thread any ability to reproduce the problem. Nor do they report any systematic occurrence of it. It did happen to two of us yesterday. Personally I subscribe to the Howling Wolves theory.

[dd32]

No further reports in two years, no core code found responsible, closing as worksforme unless others are still encountering the issue.