question about necro posts

[steve g]

I keep seeing this on forums all the time, the famous necro bump on a thread thats been dead for a few months/years

question is, if the post is relevant to the topic, is that allowed? let it die and look for something more recent?

I recently did a google search for a specific topic which landed me on an old thread here, and i posted a reply to add a little info I thought would be useful. and then I quickly got jumped by a user here because I was reviving an old thread. I take attacks like that personally so I'd like a clear, thoughtful response on why i should or should not do that.

my take is...if the topic is relevant and did come up in a google search, does that mean dont touch that thread and start a new one for the sake of keeping things fresh? or just save the space, keep the info relevant to that thread and risk the wrath of the necro police?

 

[Vauthil]

Where Thread Necromancy gets irritating (and thus the reaction you'll generally see to it) is when we get individuals who pop in inside a few scenarios:

• (Coming into a long-forgotten Tech Support thread) HAY GUYZ I HAZ THIS PORBLEM TO CAN FIX PLZ? - Hijacking other people's Tech Support threads is horrible. Hopping in on one three months dead is just icing on the cake.
• (Coming into a long-forgotten Mod discussion) OMG I TRIED 200 REDSTONE ENGINES AND THEY DIDN'T POWER MY QUARRY YOU LIED TO ME - Mods move on. It's bad enough you found the old discussion when searching and got the wrong idea, but now 20 other people see it's a "recent" thread now and read through it post by post and do the same wrong, no-longer-working thing and get mad.
• (Coming into a long-forgotten whatever) WHY IS NOBODY REPLYING I AM GIVING GOOD RESPONSES HERE - Conversations move on and so do the participants. Some necroposters don't like acknowledging that.

I can say that in your specific case you got jumped on because you were telling people from a conversation 8 months ago that they should pick up using a mechanic from a mod that wasn't even made yet at the time (Extra Utilities went "public" in its first incarnations around April), let alone included in a pack. Generally speaking, in mod discussion terms, if you're going to revive something, anything outside of about 3 months tends to be really old news and there's probably a more recent thread on the same or a related topic. People would prefer you pick that as your launchpad.

I've proposed preemptively locking everything that hasn't gotten a reply in X amount of time just so people can't make the social faux pas of necroposting in the first place. It got dropped in favor of more pressing concerns. Maybe we should revisit that idea at some point.

 

[steve g]

Fair enough. Would be nice if people would not be so hostile about it though.

 

[KingTriaxx]

While it's not something specifically enforceable because it requires case by case, I'd say that a version check is warranted. If the thread is three months old, but it's still relevant to the version that's out, IE Redpower, some leeway is understandable.

 

[Vauthil]

While it's not something specifically enforceable because it requires case by case, I'd say that a version check is warranted. If the thread is three months old, but it's still relevant to the version that's out, IE Redpower, some leeway is understandable.

Alas, making a rule about it (even just an etiquette "rule of thumb") probably won't change it much. If people did and didn't do things just based on rules, team members wouldn't have to listen to me rant about poor server advertisement submissions, mod pack bug reports that aren't mod pack bugs, and other sundry posting problems we deal with on a day-to-day basis (and my signature would probably look a bit different to boot). A great portion of mod pack users largely don't even know where one mod ends and another begins... and that's fair enough, because the advantage of running a mod pack versus telling everybody to do custom mixes is that they don't have to worry about those distinctions.

My philosophy: rely on the user/member having to remember/analyze as little as possible. Anything additional they get is a bonus and is appreciated, but shouldn't be relied upon to keep things running smoothly.

Fair enough. Would be nice if people would not be so hostile about it though.

Agreed. If people knew how may posts of my own I flat out delete and rewrite before hitting Post Reply to try and avoid coming off too strongly... =)

 

[KingTriaxx]

I meant about locking after X number of days.

 

[Vauthil]

I meant about locking after X number of days.

... I'm trying to find a nice way to say "we're forum moderators, not lifeless automatons" in response to this. The only way to make this feasible would to hire a minimum of 10 more forum moderators to keep track of this kind of thing. If I had 10 forum moderators to hire, I have far more useful things I'd like to employ them at, personally. Only way we're looking at a lock scenario is if it can be locked by a computer-objective standard, in this case, date since the last reply. Anything more complicated than that and it defeats the time savings of dealing with the occasional necropost.

 

[SatanicSanta]

I keep seeing this on forums all the time, the famous necro bump on a thread thats been dead for a few months/years

question is, if the post is relevant to the topic, is that allowed? let it die and look for something more recent?

I recently did a google search for a specific topic which landed me on an old thread here, and i posted a reply to add a little info I thought would be useful. and then I quickly got jumped by a user here because I was reviving an old thread. I take attacks like that personally so I'd like a clear, thoughtful response on why i should or should not do that.

my take is...if the topic is relevant and did come up in a google search, does that mean dont touch that thread and start a new one for the sake of keeping things fresh? or just save the space, keep the info relevant to that thread and risk the wrath of the necro police?

One of the main things that bug me about thread necromancy is getting the alert after 4 months. By that time I have probably forgotten already about that thread, so why do I need to be reminded? It's just kind of an annoyance and a pet peeve. Also, when a thread comes up to the top, that means more thread necromancers might come along and keep replying, reviving an old thread and hijacking it for no apparent reason. I check the dates on threads before (almost) every thread I post on. I say almost because if there aren't any replies to a thread and it's at the top, chances are it's not 5 billion centuries old.

 

[Succubism]

OMG I TRIED 200 REDSTONE ENGINES AND THEY DIDN'T POWER MY QUARRY YOU LIED TO ME

Horribly irrelevant but...

 

[steve g]

idea ..if someone does come across an old thread and is about to reply...perhaps put a visual warning in the post box? something like "you are about to reply to a topic that is out of date" in blinking red with scrolling marquee...just to get their attention. or add a confirm box to the reply button...something that will warn someone they are about to commit a heinous crime =)

 

[Eyamaz]

I admit, I am one who has, not so nicely, complained about a thread being necroed. The only reason it unnerved me was because I was a member of whatever conversation was taking place.
When a thread that has been not replied to in months suddenly pops up in my notifications and I'm forced to reread part of it before I realize (about 4 pages in when I reach my first post of a 15 or 20 page convo) that I'm wasting time better spent helping somewhere else... Yes, I get a bit angry.

I tend to not touch a post more than 30 days old. Only because some things change dramatically in even that time frame.

 

[SatanicSanta]

idea ..if someone does come across an old thread and is about to reply...perhaps put a visual warning in the post box? something like "you are about to reply to a topic that is out of date" in blinking red with scrolling marquee...just to get their attention. or add a confirm box to the reply button...something that will warn someone they are about to commit a heinous crime =)

That seems like too much work, and a ridiculous task for something that can easily be avoided by just looking at the last reply date.

 

[steve g]

That seems like too much work, and a ridiculous task for something that can easily be avoided by just looking at the last reply date.

yet it happened, because people didnt look at the last reply date. myself included. thats the whole point of the idea, give them a bit of warning. assuming people will look at that is just...too much work =)

 

[SatanicSanta]

yet it happened, because people didnt look at the last reply date. myself included. thats the whole point of the idea, give them a bit of warning. assuming people will look at that is just...too much work =)

It's not a hard thing to do, and the forums would get super annoying to see. Also, I don't think it would work if you use Quick Reply, or have ABP, which most people do.