Bring back the Revit Forum posts that were archived and taken down!

[jbrr27]

In December 2024, Autodesk took down Revit forum posts that were created more than 10 years ago, even if they had recent responses.  They referred to this as "archiving" said posts, but however it was done, they are no longer accessible to users.  This was frustrating for many of us, for many reasons, including:

-Posts that were created more than 10 years ago may have received comments with solutions, workarounds, fixes, updates, plug-ins options, etc. that help resolve common issues.  These are all gone now.

-Older posts often contained more recent comments from users confirming that an issue still exists.  Also users could quickly find that an issue they may have encountered for the first time is not new.

-Many Revit issues go back years and years and have not been addressed by Autodesk.  More response to common user requests to fix these issues would make some of these posts unneeded.  As these types of requests are often unaddressed, finding solutions or workarounds in the forums (or confirming no solution is available, and therefore not wasting more time trying to figure out a solution) is the best we as users had.  Many of these solutions and workarounds are now gone.

-Even users' own posts were taken down if on an older thread, so they cannot go back and see posts where they found or offered a solution if an uncommon issue is encountered again in the future.

-This was done with little warning, and comments on it were locked down.  User feedback that this was a terrible idea was ignored.  It seemed Autodesk knew this would cause enormous backlash, but proceeded anyway instead of trying to find some solution that would work for their customers who overwhelmingly asked them not to do this.

As I understand, it may have had something to do with Autodesk servers and how much it took to store all these forum posts.  If that is the case, there must be some other way to allow these to still be accessible to users, and searchable online.  Removing them took away a vast amount of resources.  Not only does it hinder finding solutions to common problems, but it felt like a huge slap in the face to those of us who used the forums frequently and found them very helpful - even integral to use of Revit with all of its quirks and bugs.  BRING. THEM. BACK.  PLEASE!

[jbrr27]

@kimberly_fuhrman-jones Why was this taken out of the ideas forum?  This is an "Idea" that was posted for people to vote on, so that Autodesk can see how frustrating this was to users.  It isn't simply a forum post seeking answers from other users, which is what it was converted to.  Putting it in a forum where votes are not available when it already had votes, and now they're gone, seems pretty fishy.

[AllenJessup]

While I have no direct knowledge of the reason. I'd suppose it was move because Autodesk will not consider the idea. This has been hashed out on other forums and the answer has always been a firm NO. 

All the answers from Autodesk seem to boil down to Corporate Speak. Basically the managers at the front line were told "This WILL Happen". So they have to put a lid on it whether they personally agree of not.

Unfortunately this kind of thing can happen even with smaller companies. With a corporation as large as Autodesk I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often.

[kimberly_fuhrman-jones]

@jbrr27 ,

The Revit Ideas is intended for suggestions for features and enhancements for Revit software. Our product teams, who are the ones reviewing the Revit Ideas, do not have influence or control over the Community forums. It is likely your Idea would have been eventually archived since our product teams have no way to "implement" it. Since there is not an Idea page for the forums, I moved your post to this page in order to escalate the request to the appropriate audience (i.e. the Community team). Customers are able to "Like" your post.

Thank you for your suggestion to improve the forums!

cc: @Tiana_Y