"auto-close comments older then X days" to "auto-close comments after X days of inactivity"

[jdingman]

So here's the situation.

Let's say someone has a post that is REALLY REALLY REALLY popular and it's active even days or weeks PAST the day you set to auto-close comments. I think it would make more sense to close comments only after a post has been inactive for more than X days, rather than cutting it off completely even if it's still active.

Sure, someone will likely set it really high if they have active posts, but sometimes a post becomes active a lot later, which could be closer to the date that the author set.

I'm recommending that the auto-close comments feature be changed to auto-close comments X days after inactivity, aka, no more comments have been made. This way it can more effectively keep communication open on the blog.

[DD32]

On the other hand, Some people will want to close after x days to prevent further discussion, So, If its included in core, There needs to be someway to toggle between them.. But there seems to be enough options already related to discussion.

[jdingman]

I strongly feel though, that changing to "inactivity" auto-close would be more effective than just complete auto-close. As a blogger and author, I would rather see comments closed only after inactivity, not just closed because I want them close.

I think if we did a poll too, we would see very similar feelings from the community

[mrmist]

There are a number of existing plugins that will do exactly this. ​http://jamesmckay.net/code/comment-timeout/ for example.

The core solution works well enough as a basic switch-off thing IMO.