So, after seeing that Mac and I have rather different views on Necro-posting, I figured I'd put it up to the Staff: How old does somethign have to be for it to eb Necro posting? does the content of the post/thread/article matter?
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I don't see how the concept of posting a reply to an old post is, in itself, an inherently bad thing. Over on thestraightdope.com forums, I've seen replies to ten-year-old posts. So what?
In my experience, deprecating necro-posts discourages people from looking for, reading, and (why the hell not?) participating in existing threads. If there's already an established thread talking about a particular issue, why not permit— hell, why not encourage— people to continue the discussion there, even if nobody had added to that discussion for a while?
I have always felt that necro-posting is only a problem if the person posting was doing so fairly obviously for the purpose of bringing the thread back up to be seen again.
If someone is contributing their genuine thoughts on a subject that people haven't discussed in a while, I cannot see the real harm in it. It may revitalize interest in the subject…or it may fall flat and the thread disappear into the mists again.
If someone repeatedly posts in the same thread in hopes that it will come back and stay back then yeah, that's out of line.
What should not ever get criticism is people posting on SCP articles or Tales that were posted a long time ago. That's site content, not "forum" threads. If you have thoughts on it, you should be able to post them anytime.
I'm all about this.
My only aside is I hate when people post to old articles with short little 'This is great' or 'Wow, I love this!' Especially when they go through and do it for dozens of articles in a row, or short period of time.
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Personally, I think a week is a decent "necro threshold" for general use forums. Anything that hasn't been talked about for a week either needs to stay buried or ought to have a new thread; anything else is rather like the guy who only discovered All Your Base recently and is annoying the hell out of everyone else when it's all dead and buried long ago. I don't see new threads as being spam.
As a side note, Project Foundation will have a per-forum "necromancy threshold" where if you attempt to reply to a thread that's been buried for X number of days, you will be warned that it's already dead. You can still do it, but it will at least deter people from inadvertently necro-posting. This threshold does not have to be the same for all forums and it's probably something that we should agree on a number for.
I approve of this on Project Foundation. But insofar as we get after people for necroposting, I maintain my above statements. In some places I've been online people get just as annoyed at people making new threads for things when there are pre-existing ones on the same subject as they do at people who bump old threads for no reason. If you have something to say that adds to the discussion, why does it matter that it's old?
To clarify, this is only for forums, not page discussion threads. I've been actively trying to remove the need to have any of the long-running super-threads that plague the Wikidot right now. Things like New SCPs and Deletions will be site features, not forums.
My personal gripe is really that I see forums as discussions and there's a certain amount of contemporary significance to threads that dies off as the people who originally participated in a discussion meander off. With PF's post votes, this will be an even more sensitive issue.
365 is a good number… I mean, if a thread is still relevant, I don't see any reason someone shouldn't post to it. Better then them making a new one for the same topic, right?
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I have always felt that necro-posting is only a problem if the person posting was doing so fairly obviously for the purpose of bringing the thread back up to be seen again.
I feel the same regarding this, and actually, pretty much everything Rhett said.
My only aside is I hate when people post to old articles with short little 'This is great' or 'Wow, I love this!' Especially when they go through and do it for dozens of articles in a row, or short period of time.
I'm thoroughly guilty of this, and I do acknowledge that it's a bad thing. I don't think it should be strictly against the rules, but that it should be discouraged if people do that, say, more than 5-10 times in 24 hours (or whatever). It turns into spam pretty quickly.
I don't mind the thread necro warning on PF, so long as it's not on page discussion threads, and of course so long as they can still do it. And aren't reamed if they do. But to be frank I think both 7 days and 365 days are extreme to the point of absurdity.
Let's be honest. Necroposting is at worst an annoyance. It's not something we need to come down hard on so long as it doesn't get spammy. (Technically 'spammy' falls into the category of annoyance, but I feel it's by far a worse sin, for reasons which I hope are obvious.)
I'm glad that the article discussions will be exempt from whatever is decided.
As for other threads, I'll start off by saying that necro-posting in itself doesn't really bug me. If someone has something interesting to say, they should say it. I'd prefer discussions on the same or very similar topics stay in one big thread, rather than scattered all over the site in several smaller threads. For example, there was a good thread on "SCP Pet Peeves" a few months ago, that I posted in. Then someone new restarted it as a fresh thread, and a bunch of newish people who hadn't read the earlier thread posted in it. Therefore, anyone who posted in the old thread either had to point at their old post (so now two threads about the same thing are live) or re-post their earlier comments.
However, a few things do annoy me:
1. Repeatedly trying to kick an old thread back to life.
2. Posting "Me too!" or "That's great!" — i.e. posts with no real content.
3. Answering someone's specific question that was posted two years ago, assuming the answer is not of interest to the general community.
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Loooong dead threads, like over 6 months or a year since anyone posted in them, ought to be necropost-locked or however it's going to be done in PF. I emphatically do not think the threshold should be as short as a week. But generally speaking, necroposting doesn't bother me.
Giving bearhugs to the unsuspecting since 1872.
Like the rest of you (it seems), necroposting doesn't bother me per se. Even to discussion threads that are based on a topic that people can still participate in without the original creator present. Asking questions of people from six months ago is ridiculous, though. And perhaps more importantly, could we put warnings on particular pages where stupid shit gets said fairly often? Maybe a specific notice on the page for 682 saying "Please, dumbass, don't suggest crosslinks." Or something to that effect.
I don't see any problem with adding something constructive/insightful to a long-dormant conversation. I'm less accepting of necro-posts that don't really add anything, but anyone who starts doing that excessively would be flagged for spamming, not necessarily for excessive (content-free) necro-posting. So… ehn, I don't see a need for a forum-wide necro-post deadline, but absolutely put the option in please, 'Kenzie. Now, maybe on a category-by-category or thread-by-thread basis, I could see that— I suspect it shouldn't be hard to put a "no necro-posting" checkbox on threads or sub-fora or however the forum will be divided.
