Question about Necroposting

[Somnia]

Out of curiosity, is there a rule about reviving an old thread? I couldn't find anything about it in the rules and I also tried using the search feature but it didn't come up with anything. Not that I've found any threads that I'd want to revive, but I've noticed other people reviving threads that are sometimes several years old. A few different forums I frequent actually encourage necroposting as long as the user has something useful to add to the topic, or has a new insight about the topic. The reason the other forums encourage reviving old threads is to try and keep people from making the same topics over and over. I can easily understand how making a stupid comment like "I agree" on a 4 year old thread is pretty useless, but what is the etiquette around here on the matter? How old is too old? Thanks.

[loplop]

Normally if a thread is older than a several months, It's considered Necroposting. I don't think that there is a hard-fast rule, it's just considered bad form. As far as making the same topic over and over again, I really haven't seen it happen here and when it does, the mods seem to just combine them at that point.

[Arch-Defender]

Depends on the mod whose watching, most won't do anything if it's not too old (like around a year or so) and the topic really get's going, though some mods will just lock it even when people are having a lively conversation over the topic, when that happens just make a new thread that's basically the same thread, I know it's dumb to have to do that but whatever. Generally it'll go well if it's not too old, asside from a user or too who think they're witty and will post a "Necroposting, really " or a boring demotivator.

[Gibb]

Sometimes it's just better to make a new thread if the old thread is sufficiently old and has run it's course.

Example, a video game is announced at E3 so somebody makes a thread for it. The game comes out a year later, so somebody brings back the old thread to say "hey this game is cool, anybody else buy it?" At this point I think the old thread should be left dead, since most of the people talking in it are talking about speculations about the game based on really early information.

If you're bringing back a thread that isn't so time centric, such as a "funny pictures" thread or something, I suppose that's probably fine, so long as you have good reasons for reviving something old.

[Somnia]

Thanks for the replies guys! I'll keep all that in mind.

[Jon]

Originally Posted by Gibb

Sometimes it's just better to make a new thread if the old thread is sufficiently old and has run it's course.

Sometimes. That's the keyword there. I feel if it's just a legitimate discussion thread of say, a particular anime show or video game shouldn't really matter how old it is, as (to me) its still worth skimming through some of the responses, as long as there are a good amount of worthy posts in the thread.

Old news threads? Chat threads? New member threads? Threads with 5 posts? Nah, who cares. As long as its not stupid old (say before 2009) where half the members don't even visit the site anymore I don't see the big deal.

Sigh, first world problems...