Zombies!!

[pt40fathoms]

I was going to post this on the whine and cheese thread, but then I thought it needs the most exposure it can get.

Am I alone in my thinking, in that when I see a reply to a subject that was discussed back when Mike Nelson was still a houshold name, that this person replying should have at least checked the date of the thread before resurecting it?

I know that some people have nothing better to do than dig up ancient threads. But come on here, what could possibly be gained in responding to a thread about a BCD problem, or any other issue for that fact, three or four years after the last post on the subject?

I think we should start a movement to CLOSE threads that are over 6 or 9 months old.

What say you "moderators" or "grand pooh bahs" of SB?

 

[simbrooks]

I think we should start a movement to CLOSE threads that are over 6 or 9 months old.

What say you "moderators" or "grand pooh bahs" of SB?

There are almost 83,000 threads on SB, i would suspect that we currently have about a few thousand of those "active" at one time (or at least we get ~1000 new posts each day at this time) - it might take a while to do this task Also with some of the good stuff that is back there in the pages of threads we might get sidetracked reading! People just need to be more observant of what they are posting to. :11ztongue

 

[radinator]

Why?

If you don't want to read it, don't. If you can't tell it's an old thread then maybe a small change in the coding should indicate the date of the first post as well as the last. I'd rather not seem them closed completely.

Personally I like that some threads, rather than be repeated again and again, can just be continued with new input. I also like that I have a archive of many years where I can search for particular answers to questions.

 

[cmalinowski]

never hurts to rethink old thoughts. "is this still considered true" is a valid question.

 

[Kim]

Closing them completely would make it harder to advise people to "Do a search!" If they do do a search and find a relevant thread - but need some clarification on something that was said in the thread - they wouldn't be able to post to it so would have to start a new one anyway. The result? More threads!

 

[StSomewhere]

What a great idea!

I'd be pretty easy to lock the threads after x months of inactivity, but still have them be searchable. Or maybe a prompt that asks "are you sure you want to reply to a thread from x years ago?"

 

[pipedope]

I say keep it the way it is now.

Sometimes people have something worth posting to an old thread and it pays off to revisit things sometimes.

Now, that said, maybe I should go back and delete some old threads where I said embarasing things.

 

[String]

Ive seen on a few boards running similar software a slight mod - quick reply is removed but if a user wishes to reply they click a reply icon located next to a "due to the age of this thread, quick reply has been disabled".

That way they should know the age but can still revive if they really want to.

 

[HammerNoMore]

Or maybe a prompt that asks "are you sure you want to reply to a thread from x years ago?"

Now that's a good idea....

 

[H2Andy]

one huge benefit to having old threads revived is that while they may not help
the original persons who started the thread (who may be long gone), newer
members do get to read them and benefit from them if they are revived.

sort of like an "accumulation of knowledge" effect

by the way, as of this post, 75% of those polled want to keep the zombie threads