Marking or grouping recently unanswered threads to aid skimming them

[ScriptyChris]

Hey,

i noticed that when a long enough list of new threads in a channel arises and some threads get an answer and some not, i think it's quite tedious to scroll through all unread threads (optionally multiplying that time by a number of channels, which person often looks at) since visiting the server for the last time to pick unanswered ones to then try to help solving them. I think it would be more convenient if there was kind of a widget/section (potentially configured to be opt-in by default, so uninterested folks wouldn't have to worry about turning it off or hiding it) containing dynamically grouped/marked threads unanswered for i.e. 24 hours to aid skimming them.

Technically, it might be some kind of a queue where every new thread is pushed into and after some timeout or if thread gets a reply posted by a non-author (because some folks send a few posts as their thread is created), such thread would be removed from the queue.

Me and @vcarl already had some intro discussion about it on Discord (which actually this issue is based on) and so far it seems that the constraint would be (quoting @vcarl):

unfortunately archived threads turn into "#deleted-channel" if they're linked to as a channel name

like how you can do #Marking or grouping recent unanswered threads, once it's archived that link isn't possible anymore. needs to be a message link like https://discord.com/channels/102860784329052160/975446897189855242/975446899106652261

I am going to try dig into our bot's code, which is responsible for handling threads to see if i will be able to implement a working solution.
Meanwhile, i am looking forward to see any suggestions or opinions about the idea. :)

[vcarl]

Ugh misclick while typing this, sorry

containing dynamically grouped/marked threads unanswered for i.e. 24 hours to aid skimming them.

I think it might be sufficient to add some logic when we mark a thread as "locked", because we already reply with an extra hint on how to refine a question if it's not getting answered well.

jobs-moderation.ts also loads and tracks messages for a channel. Not 100% on all the differences against how autothread's loading works.

The autothread logic is run every hour, that or the job moderation loading might be a good reference for something accomplishing what you're describing with the queue of threads. This doesn't use a queue so that there isn't any state to lose on restart — scanning the channel completely works after a deploy, pushing new messages to a queue would reset every deploy.

I think there might be a couple of options here:

• add in another schedule check-in before the thread is locked, so highlight threads before it's closed
• if a thread is locked without replies, link to it to highlight that someone got missed (and maybe encourage them to post a followup? downside here is that no one can engage in a locked thread)
• something else? if you have something in mind.

As for presenting it in a widget or something, maybe it could be posted into a thread? So it presents as a thread title posted by Reactibot, with the contents obscured. I'm not sure exactly how it would work though.