I'd like to make the suggestion that any thread that had been dead more than thirty days be closed. In this forum waking the dead is an annoyance, but in others it could stand to be a genuine impedance to people getting their current questions answered.

tim

good but some old threads are always reverent regardless their post time

you have a point there but it usually gets the value instead of the new ones...

The way things are going here it looks like I'll be celebrating Easter, Valentine's Day, Christmas and Thanksgiving all at once. Guess I'll dig out the old tree, print out all these pointless posts and decorate the tree with them. They are certainly abundant enough to cover several trees.

tim

Originally Posted by ooyes

good but some old threads are always reverent regardless their post time

Then why not just read it.
There shouldn't be any point in replying to an old thread unless you have important and valid info to add. Most of the replies Tim is referring to are completely useless and only makes the poster look like an annoying idiot.

@Tim,
Unfortunately, there are members that have this strange idea that their post count is just as important as page rank, but why they resort to necroposting is beyond me. There are plenty of new threads to reply to, including our neverending "fun threads".

well the good news is 3 months later, one of them will reply to this thread.

Me, too.

I didn't read it, but I agree with it.

You make a good point. I've seen forums implement this policy, so it's not really unheard of.

But in any event, happy Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Passover, and whatever else you celebrate.

Why, thank you.

It would seem that such a policy is going to become a necessity, just from the sheer volume of, "Wow, that's really cool" replies to threads from 1998.

tim

Allow me to digress into rambling thoughts on why bumping a thread might be useful. Well, a lot of reasons, really, but they probably fall under the rule about 20 % of your people causing 80 % of your problems.

If I want to update people on something I've brought up in the past, I'll use the search function, pull up my old thread, and announce something in there. I'd rather do this than have made 2 new threads on the same topic, for the good of the forum. I guess most people probably won't do that (it takes a wee little bit of effort!) so maybe this isn't a valid objection.

But I still say don't throw out the baby with the bath water!

Wow, that's really cool. Oh, sorry, I forgot to wait the requisite 3 months to say that.

I would think that most posts that fall in the category you're describing would still be less than a month old, but you can still link to or quote from a thread that's closed. Personally I think it would avert some abuse to implement that policy, especially with that contest going on.

tim

How about we pelt the offending necroposter with dead penguin carcasses until they run away crying.

Originally Posted by serandfae

I would think that most posts that fall in the category you're describing would still be less than a month old, but you can still link to or quote from a thread that's closed. Personally I think it would avert some abuse to implement that policy, especially with that contest going on.

I don't see any mathematical reason why a person should be more likely to have an update on a 1 month old thread than a 4 month old thread? I know there's a limit from memory - what was I talking about again? Heck, half the time I can't remember what I went to the fridge for. But something happening today being related to something that happened in the past, is the way of life. If the web had always existed, I might have posted "My wife gave me a son" and 15 years later "My son stole the dang car" or something like that. Not the greatest example, but it's what I came up with. The Microsoft and Yahoo merger might be a better one.

That said, I think what you're really being bothered by is useless posting. I'm guessing you really don't care when a thread started, if it's relevant and useful? This is what I'm getting at about the baby and the bath water.

I think a more useful rule would be to force a limit, and especially on creating new threads, but it sounds like replying should be considered as well, or mayhaps resurrecting a dead thread? I've asked people to consider the idea that a post should need maybe 2 paragraphs, or 10 sentences, in order to open a thread. The actual numbers aren't important, but I think the concept would help the forum a lot. What are your thoughts?

Overall, I don't have a problem with old threads coming back to life. Mostly it's just the uselessness of the reply that makes it annoying.

I remember seeing a forum with an addon that displayed a message at the end of old threads (right above the reply button). The message stated that replying to old posts was frowned upon, except under certain circumstances. Can't remember what forum software it was but maybe there's something like that for VB.

Yes, the useless posting is what gets on my nerves, but it's the manner in which it's being done in certain cases. Puffing up post counts by saying hello to everyone who's joined in the last two years, as an exaggerated for instance, is abusing the system, presumably to try and win that contest? We do have current threads far older than thirty days, but they're still going, and aren't likely to stop. What I'm driving at is closing threads that have been replyless for over a month, as an arbitrary set time, to curb that kind of abuse. But there's other ways of doing that, of course.

tim

First - as a mod I have to say that it would be nearly impossible to close all of the thread that are more than a certain age.

Second - I seem to remember there being a message if you were replying to a really old thread. We must have lost it on one of the upgrades. I will bring it up to the admins.

Third - I think the annoying posts have some to do with the contest, but also some to do with the merge and the publicity surrounding both. Only a small percent of your points can come from posts, so post padding in and of itself isn't going to win anyone the contest.

I'm going to chime in here with a more serious response.

Truthfully, I think the "useless reply" is because of people wanting to boost their post count due to an, erm, contest that's ongoing. The same goes for a question that has 30 people answering with the same exact thing. We're not an echo chamber (or are we?) I can certainly chime in with the same answer, but I'm not going to artificially inflate my post count for that reason.

Sometimes it's useful to bump up a thread. In most cases, I will usually say something like "way to bring up a dead thread" and hope people get the message. I haven't employed such a tactic here yet though.

I think this will all die down eventually -- say, May 13ish or so.

Heh, I found some interesting examples of how beating a dead thread has been employed.

1. This thread is from 2004. A response was posted today.
2. This guy is purposely asking questions that are on topic but that are "under the radar" (or so he hoped).

I think that there's a trend of abuse going on with folks looking to boost their post count because they want a Macbook Air. Just an observation. I figured a mod might want to take a look at it and this is an appropriate thread to post it in.

I did take care of it, but in the future please use the "report post" buttong in the top left hand corner of the post. It's the quickest, easiest way for us mods to take care of abuses like this.