Handling new questions in old threads

Some organizations Ive worked for lock conversations that are over x days old or x days of inactivity. 

This is a double edge sword however as answers/solutions can change over time. Some say hey this solution didnt work anymore but this did. That can be very valuable. Creating a new thread with a new solution should bump it above the older post however.

This really depends on how “Clean” you keep your community. 

I was facing the same problem, so a few years ago I automated for questions to be closed 7 days after they are marked as answered. This allows time for some follow up questions or comments (ex. Thanks! That solved it!), but closes it by when you might it expect it to be buried in activity feeds. 

As part of the move, I updated the Phrase that shows on closed threads with links and instructions:

I haven’t had any complaints and only occasionally do I get asks to reopen a thread. More frequently, I do see new questions reference old questions. 

We don’t have too much trouble with this. At least not enough to close threads in my mind. But I do sometimes encourage someone trying to find more information from the OP, on an old question, to post a new question if they don’t get a response. The OP could be long gone.

Such great input - thank you all.
​@DannyPancratz  I’ve done the same! I’m going to give it a trial run and see what it does to my Q&A figures - hopefully i’ll see them going up.
Thanks a lot

We don't want to close threads too soon, as we want to maintain an open atmosphere. So closing happens after 6 months of inactivity.

If a new question gets asked that is fairly close in time to the original active period of the topic, and asks basically the same question, we tend to leave it there and just say something like ‘please see the marked answer and start a new topic if that doesn't help’.

If it's a different enough question, or enough time has passed, or we really want to keep the new question separate for whatever reason, we actively split it to a new topic.

For our community, the expectation is also mainly that our core group of super users will answer the questions, rather than the original topic starter.