"Cooldown" was also unclear to me. I though you meant "sent to your room for cussing!"
To me, your description sounds like you came from a search engine that led you to threads locked for inactivity or age. Locking used to happen at about the three-month point, but recently seems to have been pushed out to about a year.
Apple have not shared their thoughts on this with us and probably will not. What is apparent to long-term users through observation:
- Posters rarely return to threads they started weeks or months before, so mining up old thread only makes the topic lists harder to work methodically.
- All threads are dated. Check the dates before answering.
- Best practice, rather than coming from a search engine, is to use the site map to go to topic lists with which you have expertise, and work the newest threads first
Posts locked for inactivity also have this banner:
There are lots of opportunity to help here, but spend time with the newest posts to be most effective.