Why no posting to old threads?

[wayner]

I recently posted to an old thread on pool automation. I was politely chastised for reviving an old thread, and my post was deleted. Why is this a policy? In some instances doesn't it make sense to continue a thread that may be dormant for a year or more that is exactly on the topic that you want to discuss as this thread has some very relevant information. Especially when the discussion is on a very niche topic that only comes up rarely, rather than a run-of-the-mill topic on Free Chlorine levels. In my instance it was about trying to use the RS485 port on a SWCG unit.

So I started a new thread and linked to the old thread. But this has the disadvantage of not providing notifications to those who were active in the old thread, and those are the people that I am trying to reach to see if they have made any progress on the topic.

So can I humbly suggest that one be allowed to rejuvenate niche topics in the forums? What harm does it do?

 

[mknauss]

Forum Etiquette #6.

Start a new thread.

If you wish to notify someone, use @membername.

 

[Sarah and Nate]

A far more common occurrence is that new users add their own new issue into an ancient thread with someone else's issue. I agree it's relatively harmless but that is why the guideline is in place.

 

[dfwnoob]

If you've ever had to administrate or moderate a large forum, you'd realize how intensely annoying it is to have a 3, 5, or 10+ year old thread bumped, especially if that thread is already more than a handful of pages. Users click on it, read through 3 or 4 posts, then start commenting on it not realizing that it was posted a decade ago. It becomes very difficult for other members to follow and is generally considered poor "forum hygiene".

It's best to create a new thread and "cite", reference, or quote an old post when you need to. It keeps information current and probably helps SEO to not have ancient threads bumped up that may have outdated information (especially referencing stuff like automation systems where it can change a lot over the years).

Bumping ancient threads to get an OPs attention is rarely effective because forums have very significant member turnover. Someone who posted about something 5 years ago may not even have a pool anymore, let alone be an active member. Keeping it clean in a new thread helps get more attention to your problem faster and makes it simpler to logically follow.

That's my two pennies from the perspective of a long-term forum administrator, anyway.

 

[Dirk]

Many of the very people you might want to have eyes on your issue are helping a lot of people here, all at once. If we think a thread is "handled," we might focus less on an old thread, or not at all, in service of others. Not just old threads, but busy ones. If I see a thread with a couple of dozen posts (no matter how old) and one with 1 or 2 posts, or maybe none at all, I'll check on the latter first, as the assumption is: that member hasn't been helped yet. And then maybe that's all I have time for that day (like today).

New threads get more fresh eyes on it, it's just out of necessity, not necessarily interest.

Create a link to the thread you're interested in in your new thread, ping any members from the old thread you want to alert to your new thread, and go from there. That's your best bet for getting attention.

 

[Newdude]

As said above, your infraction wasn't necessarily wrong but got caught up in well meaning rules needing to be followed for fairness and continuity.

The overwhelming majority of the time I consider it rude to continue an old discussion, even when the members are still active. I have no idea what I said a year or three ago and to quote me or others we have to go back through the old thread, possibly pages deep, for context. If one asked a new question we'd be up to speed with their 1st post without needing to cross reference somebody else's issue and how it may or may not be relevant to the thread resurrecter.

On top of that, many times those old thoughts change after we've seen failures, successes or found work arounds since.

 

[Superblue72]

Just a thought is it possible to make older threads locked so they can't be resurrected from the dead....

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Here's a trick if you want to get people's attention and copy in information from an old thread -

Do you see the "+Quote" button at the bottom of any thread ?



You can tap those +Quote buttons on any number of posts across different threads and then push the "Insert Quotes button in your editing window and it will bring up a dialogue box that allows you to insert all of the quotes that you have recently selected as well as change the order of them or not insert some. It's very handy for collecting posts to threads and replying to individuals. The captured quotes do not have to come from the current thread, you can open up multiple browsers tabs with different threads in them and capture posts from all over ... very handy.

Yeah, and as a forum expert, I really hate resurrected zombie threads. It forces me to read a bunch of old posts before realizing that someone has added a new question to the end of it. It's better to just start your thread new, add the link to the old thread or capture quotes and go from there. If people want to read 300 posts in an ancient thread, they can click the link.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Just a thought is it possible to make older threads locked so they can't be resurrected from the dead....

This has been discussed. There isn't a consensus yet on auto-closing threads and I don't think the Xenforo backend has an easy tool for doing that. So it would be up to mods to go and close things manually or find some automated tool to run a script on the entire database ... and potentially kill the entire forum. It's one of those best not "fix" what ain't broken scenarios ...