One way to help initiate discussions in a community forum is by encouraging new topics to be created by the users. New topics get more attention, especially if you are sharing new topics in various social media channels. In my experience running a forum since 2010, if a user adds a post to an old topic from years ago, it doesn't get the attention that a brand new topic on the same subject would generate.

My suggestion would be to have settings for allowing topics to close after a specified time period. Even better, it would be great if that time period could be based upon the date of the last reply in the topic, rather than the original topic date. Perhaps there would be a secondary setting that would allow the admin to set the time period from the original topic date or the latest reply date.

For example: let's say a topic is started today, 2025-08-01 and is followed by several replies over the course of a week or so. The last reply is posted on 2025-08-09. A couple of example scenarios could be:

1. Set the auto-close date to 1 year after the original topic date. This would mean that the topic closes on 2026-08-01.
2. Set the auto-close date to 1 year after the last reply date. This would mean that the topic closes on 2026-08-09.

Using example scenario #2 above would allow the topic to prove its staleness for one year after the last reply, thus making it feasible to close it permanently.

Thank you for your consideration! 😊