This 
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FWIW, one of the HE staff or a community member with some sort of authority has been getting even more aggressive at closing topics in the last few days. I read the forum once each day, in the morning. Just 15 hours ago, a person posted a question about the best way to address a problem of turning an electric heater on and off based on temperature and another condition. A handful of replies had been made with various approaches. I happen to have addressed this issue very effectively for two years now, and had yet a different, simple approach. But when I went to reply, I got the "THIS TOPIC HAS BEEN SOLVED" warning.
Well, NO, it hadn't been "solved"! Some workable ways to accomplish the OP's goal had been offered, but there were yet other approaches possible. I thought I had a decent one, but because I'm not lurking on the forum all day, ready to pounce with a response, I'm told my opinion doesn't count. I have been a big fan of this forum and often commented on how much I enjoy it, but this overly aggressive obsession with closing topics is getting old, fast. There's just no need for it, and it's creating a much less welcoming, participative environment. Somebody clearly doesn't have enough to do, or needs to go find ways to be more helpful. This "close the topic" obsession isn't it.
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Agreed, aggressive closing of questions does imo not make for the āVibrantā community Hubitat has built to date, and is very off putting!
Surely if the Hubitat team want to apply a different closure policy to questions, they could make it something sensible like 1 month of inactivity and then auto close the question?
Then at least the question topics can die a natural death without causing the current unease amongst members.
Pretty much anyone can mark a thread solved; doesn't keep you from adding to the discussion, and doesn't close the thread, just let's you know that someone believes that they have an answer...
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Would you care sharing a link to this topic?
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^^^^^ this exactly ...
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I think that @Madcodger is referring to this topic. In this particular case, the person who started the topic marked it as solved.
However, the topic is not closed, and other good solutions have been offered, including one from @kahn-hubitat, after the OP marked it as "solved".
So @Madcodger - if I have the correct topic, please feel free to add to it.
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The person who asked the question marked it solved, not support or another community member.
Last I checked the thread was not closed, so feel free to post whatever you want on it.
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I believe the OP of a thread can mark it as solved, or other users with trust level of āregularā or above. And presumably staff.
As has hopefully been made clear, if one cares to actually read the posts in this thread, solved != closed.
And threads in only one, specific category get automatically closed if marked as solved by support staff.
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Yes, this is understood by most of us.
What many of us are saying is, this doesn't feel like the right approach and has a negative impact on our perception (it's not nice to see a recent thread closed when we would have liked to contribute a different option/pov).
@bobbyD I would like to propose a more friendly Question topic closure policy:
I don't think any category has an automatic closure period shorter than (or even close to) a month. Ask Anything is a manual process, and the issue with letting anything go longer there is that recent posts in this category are shown on the FAQ section on the Support site, and FAQs lens themselves to a single answer. Perhaps that could be explained more clearly when creating or closing posts in that category, though it's certainly hinted at.
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Corrected my post, thanks for clarifying @bertabcd1234. Itās not an automatic closure in the ask anything category.
Threads in other categories automatically close after a year of inactivity now, which I find to be a welcome change as I think necroposting more often than not creates confusion.
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Yes, this has been pointed out - I'm suggesting that an automatic 1 month policy be applied instead. We understand Hubitat's desire to keep the AA section clean and tidy and not have threads necroed, but I would suggest it's best to let them die off on their own but with a shorter and automatic policy applied.
I agree, this is an excellent policy for general topics.
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I don't think this is a good idea for the Ask Anything category. The questions in that category are primarily from new users who are funneled to the community site via support.hubitat.com.
While Hubitat clearly provides a million and one approaches to tackle any automation scenario, these new users need a quick answer that they can move on with. Closing a topic once there is at least one workable and practical solution gives them closure and they move on.
The rest of us plenty of other places in the forum to pontificate 
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I assume for continued discussion? I understand that concern, but it's at odds with the desire for these to be FAQ-like. (The concern being a single answer, not future necroposting.) However, there are many other options. I'd suggest posting in another category in the first place of it's not this type of post, moving the thread if it's not yours but it doesn't really belong there (and your Discourse trust level is high enough to do so), asking a moderator to split posts into a new topic if needed, or creating a new topic linked to the existing one (just adding a link to the post yourself will do it). That way, this category stays working as intended.
Outside this category,I guess just don't derail things. 
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Fair enough points all round - I've had my say and will wander off now.
This isn't a "toys out of pram" issue for me, but I did find the change jarring - I'm Autistic, so perhaps that is just due to my natural discomfort with change (prolly explains why I gave up being an IT server engineer - relearning stuff every year drove me nuts). 
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With all due respect, this topic has become over worn, been all over the place, and is not additive to the community overall.
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