Why does scheduling a topic to lock not work consistently?

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Scheduling Topic Lock Inconsistencies

The ability to schedule topics to lock at a given time is not working consistently. orangeandblack5 reports that instead of locking at the exact predetermined time, topics often lock at a random second within a minute or two after the scheduled time, or sometimes not at all.

orangeandblack5 has tried to identify the cause but found no pattern, and JammyDodger offered to help replicate the issue on a test site. orangeandblack5 provided more details about their setup, including the fact that topics are usually scheduled to close when there are several people actively engaged, and that topics with thousands of posts may be more prone to the issue.

Despite trying a different instance, the problem persists, and orangeandblack5 had to manually lock the thread. The issue is puzzling, as it seems like a simple feature to implement. orangeandblack5 is still experiencing the problem and is seeking a solution.

1

We use the ability to schedule topics to lock at a given time pretty heavily, and have been kinda shocked at just how bad/inconsistent this feature is when compared to other forum software. In short, scheduling your topic to lock at 9:00 PM, for example, seems to lock at some random second within a minute or two following 9:00 PM - if it ever locks at all! Sometimes topics scheduled to lock just… run to the end of the timer and keep going.

It’s really not clear how or why this feature is seemingly incapable of just locking a topic at an exact predetermined time, so is there anything we can do to improve it or should this be moved to bug reports or what?

2

If you can give me a more detailed step-by-step I can have a go at replicating it on my test site and seeing if I can spot anything? Is there anything special about the categories they’re in, for instance, or the length or timing of them? The closer I can match your set-up the better. :+1:

3

We’re not aware of anything in particular that drives it, although generally we schedule them to close at times when there are several people actively engaged (as they know the topic is going to be closed and try to sneak in a few final words right before the deadline).

Not sure why that would have any effect, especially given I don’t think our site is big enough to ever have that be more than like 20 people (at absolute most, 50, but that would have to be an EXTREME edge case).

We also generally get up to a few thousand posts before we end up scheduling things to lock, so maybe longer topics handle it worse than topics with like 100 posts?

5

Okay I can confirm it’s not a site thing or an activity thing because we’ve tried an entirely different instance and the timer still ran out and the thread just didn’t lock and I had to do it manually :upside_down_face:

6

…and again

Really not sure how this is missing this consistently, it feels like it should be pretty simple?