What? I've seen more recent threads getting "archived" (no one can comment or vote) earlier and earlier than ever. It used to be that every thread was guaranteed to stay communicable for at least a year, maybe 2. That was enough for most things but still represented a discontinuity in the transfer of knowledge as a new thread would need to be made and gain traction and votes and rarely (very rarely) the previous thread would be linked to avoid just recycling the same points and never making progress. That exceedingly rare linking now basically never happens and threads get archived as early as 6 months! I assume there's some variation as I believe I may have seen threads that don't get locked so early but it's a significant disruptor on the transfer of knowledge. And with how bad reddit's searching is, unless the previous thread is linked there's a tiny chance you'll ever find it let alone even know it existed.
That format just promotes reposting and restating the exact points that were popular 6 months ago. There have been many times I have had something to contribute to a discussion and have been rebuffed by the "This thread has been archived" popup. Truly any thread more than a year could not survive most current social conglomerates, I understand the scaling issues but it does not make it untrue.
Not anymore.