Is it weird? Is it rude? Should threads be archived?
Me posting in a thread that was last active in 2005:
Thread necromancer should be a Halloween costume
We had the opportunity to do something really funny, here
You still can if you come back in 5 years
The wording had initially confused me.
I thought this was about posts that got no comments, not about necro’ing posts.
Honestly, I think necro’ing posts is really only a problem when your forum software doesn’t have many options for sorting the feed. Lemmy is more advanced; if you don’t like necro’d posts, then just don’t sort by recent activity.
Not if we keep this thread alive.
In memory of the lost ones: *Bump
Perfectly fine. Bumps don’t do what they used to do in messageboard/BBS contexts, so if you have something useful/clever/funny to say in a dead thread I say go for it.
Heck, sometimes it can prompt a follow-up when someone says “You know, I should do [x related to topic]” after some time has passed, which is fun.
If I come across a post and I have something significant enough to comment, I leave it regardless of age. But I don’t think I’m ever going to see anything more than a few days old with how I browse.
I acknowledge it. I preface my post with something, usually /rezz or I’ll comment “I know this is old but…”
I have had threads on reddit that were well over 5 years old get comments. I’m not upset, but I am questioning how you ended up so deep in the past + what the hell past me was thinking.
On Lemmy? Go for it.
In my experience people primarily get annoyed at thread necro when it’s to ask/discuss something tangential to the initial thread. Just start a new one in that case, instead of potentially bumping notifications to several people for your barely-related issue/discussion.
OTOH if it’s relevant info for a long dead thread then by all means add it or ask your query, that info could be valuable to someone with the same issue or it could be a pertinent update to an old discussion with new info.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with necroing a thread though. Automated archiving of threads is mostly counter-productive. Like when I find a closed and locked thread on GitHub that I have a fix for I just go “oh well guess they can find the fix themselves”.
I don’t care, I post when I have something to say.
I don’t understand why people would find it rude/incorrect
God knows there aren’t many new threads on lemmy so I’ve been searching random keywords looking for interesting old threads to read and sometimes comment on.
Quite a few of us sort by “New Comments”. Posting to an old thread can help breathe new life into it, especially if you have something new to add to the conversation.
I’d never seen that feature. I’m gonna try it out now
I hope we have threads stay alive for years
If the thread is still relevant - post away!
this was how it worked on forums back in the day, no? i see it as a revival of a good thing
I love notifications about replies to the old stuff as it means that the internet has slowed down and new and shining isn’t as appealing as old stuff.
I do too! I mean notifications of replies are always a shot of dopamine no matter how old.
That reminds me there’s this dude who replied to a pic I posted with “Can use this as an album cover?” I said sure and he said “Cool see me in a year”. I replied a year later “How’s that album coming along?” and was like “give me another year” lol. It’s almost been two years now. Gonna check in again soon.
It is a holdover from the old forum days when adding a comment would pop a thread to the top of the front page, so someone going through and commenting on multiple old posts would flood the front page with outdated discussions. Generally those people would also post worthless comments, like ‘Thanks’, that didn’t add anything.
Now that we have more ways to sort the underlying problem is no longer relevant, but some people still hold on to that mindset. Some people who weren’t around for the older forums may have caught the disdain from others, or could even just have it in their minds that discussions always have limited time frames for whatever reason.
I don’t care unless someone relies to my comment to continue some stupid argument they started four months ago.
Oh I didn’t know that! I didn’t grow up on forums but I used them a few times here and there. You’re right new replies do push a thread to the top. Kind of a bad design lol.
It was a great design when the intent was to make new discussion visible. It was great for reviving threads when new and prodictive discussion was added!
Like any design, there will be cases where it doesn’t work as intended. It is hard to design around people adding non-productive comments.
Fair point
There’s only one forum I visit nowadays and it gets older threads revived every now and then. Usually to say “Whatever happened to that? Is it done yet?”
Thanks.
Depends on the type of community, forums it’s potentially disruptive since it bumps it to the top. Redsit/Lemmy style it matters less.
I certainly would advocate against archiving Lemmy posts in a way that “locks” them, I can’t tell you how many times an old reddit post shows up in a search result and helpful newer replies with the most recent information is still getting added sporadically.
I get comments on months old posts, I’m fine with it since it will help future users
If the person is looking for a discussion (ex. They need help with the software I posted about), then it’s usually better they make a new post
