Another one of my not-especially-brilliant ideas, and I think one I've suggested somewhere before.
Allow threads to be locked so that new users with new problems will create new threads with new questions - instead of hijacking, reviving, and cluttering other threads which have already served their purposes. I think the thread creator should always have this option, or should at least be presented with the option after awarding a "Solution".
I've noticed that many people only visit the PM Community when they're experiencing issues with their service, account, activation, porting, payment, whatever. Exactly the sorts of support functions this forum intends to provide. But the problem is that many of these one-time visitors are impatient, frustrated, even angry that PM "took their money" without giving them working phone service in return. They just want their issues resolved and working phone service, they don't really want to read through pages and pages of boring technical phone stuff. So they immediately append their requests/demands/complaints onto the first thread their search engine spits out which appears to have active attention from PM staff - even if it's about entirely different issues or has lain dormant for months/years or was resolved by a now-retired PM staff member.
Most online forums provide thread locking options, typically requiring approval from moderators on a case-by-case basis. Along with automatically locking threads after a certain period of inactivity (usually 3, 6, or 12 months, depending on the nature of the forum). Policies vary but the general idea is to keep related topics together and unrelated topics apart on both the onsite forums and the offsite search engine caches which point towards them.
