Thread necro-ing in forums

[On2wheels]

I'm not a software guy and I've always wondered this. Not aimed at this forum, just in general because we see it everywhere. If someone has an issue that someone else had a year ago (or longer) and he/she has new information to help everyone who had that issue, would it not benefit everyone to bump that same thread? Or is it simply 'internet etiquette' not to bump a thread older than x number of months? Is it all up to the admins of that site to decide how old is too old?

Is there a mechanical reason forums don't like it when threads are revived from the dead? More specifically, does a database get fragmented or something when an old thread is bumped up making the entire dbase less efficient?

I genuinely want to know.

 

[Shadowmeph]

I sometimes mention necroing posts but not out of anoyance mostly out o tesing becaue I have dont it .
personally vbeing a person that has necroed my share of threds in diffrent forums pretty much every time I didnt look close at the date the last post lol I run intoi a fair amonht of coincidence in my l;ife meaning many posts I notice the month day but forget to check the yr I actually did this yesterday I noticed the month was april 17th after I posted i noticed the year 2023 lol
I think that if necroing is a real issue maybe the admins of the site should archive those posts , but sometimesd maybe someone is acsking a repeated question on a forum say like steam forums so people may link to an older post for them to gety the answer in which the person may thank the original post then someone else comes along noticed the thank you and continues thye converstaion . which myself if the person tha tasked the question and it is a not to detailed answer maybe the person should have just answered the question with out linking to the older post.
the edicate differes per site ususally younger people get annoyed for people necroing posts

 

[sswilson]

I personally don't mind on-topic necros of technical threads if somebody is facing the same issues and is looking for clarity, but the great majority of necros are either spammers who got a hit for the thread in a search engine bot, or some rando wanting to interject his opinion on the topic a significant time after the community has moved on.

I necro basic windows OS threads all of the time when I come across something general about a recent release that I think folks should know (or would be interested in).

As far as where the bar is? You're correct that it'd be down to one of the mods to make a judgment call on whether the necro content is appropriate for resurrection, or if the OP should just create a new fresh thread on the subject.

 

[Marzipan]

@On2wheels the only place I've seen that kills old threads so they can't be necro'd is reddit. have you run into issues with it on other forums? it's not a problem here, I don't think...

 

[JD]

Our Hockey forum has threads from 2012 on page 1 that I would deem as "necro" as it's about events that are now historical and no longer current/relevant to discussion if somebody was to post within them.

But adding new information to an existing thread about troubleshooting the same problem, or a software feature or such, I wouldn't really consider necro'ing.

 

[Lysrin]

Also following up on things like older build logs, or especially something that didn't have a solution in the original run but then a solution is found, I appreciate both of those. Perhaps we can call those "refreshers" instead of necros

 

[Shadowarez]

I'm bad for that iv built so many rigs some have been rebuilt or transfered to other cases or been upgraded.

 

[On2wheels]

@On2wheels the only place I've seen that kills old threads so they can't be necro'd is reddit. have you run into issues with it on other forums? it's not a problem here, I don't think...

Steam discussions are being locked when they get to be around a year old and someone replies. That's one that annoys me since games can have bugs or workarounds that help a lot of people and when a thread is started years ago and still has people replying it really shows how much support the game has.