The Resurrection of the Dead

rogerjolly

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80
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Yorkshire
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  1. Vegan
I would like to suggest that there should be an archive system whereby threads which have had no new contributions in, say, the last year could be consigned.

Recently there have been several cases of very old threads being responded to most frequently by absolute newbies to the forum. It makes me ponder the thought that this might be a new tactic devised by trolls……..

An extreme example is “Human Trafficking-3 Woman Kept As Slaves in London” which had a short life as a news story in November 2013. Yesterday, after seven years in the grave, it was responded to. Silly, silly, silly or what?

Sure, there will be loads of perennial topics that might have different slants to them but surely these would be best presented in entirely new threads with a freshness to them. :)

Roger.
 
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It might be a way to prevent spammers from exploiting old threads as targets for posting their links, but it will also block legitimate and useful posts. As an example, some years ago someone started a thread asking about what Leslie Cross died from:
Question How did Leslie Cross die?

A strange thing to ask about, but a few years later Mr Cross' son comes along and posts a reply!

So my opinion is that the disadvantages of locking old threads outweigh the benefits.
 
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Reactions: KLS52 and shyvas
It might be a way to prevent spammers from exploiting old threads as targets for posting their links, but it will also block legitimate and useful posts. As an example, some years ago someone started a thread asking about what Leslie Cross died from:
Question How did Leslie Cross die?

A strange thing to ask about, but a few years later Mr Cross' son comes along and posts a reply!

So my opinion is that the disadvantages of locking old threads outweigh the benefits.
That was truly exceptional!
 
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Back when web boards were still the thing, there were anal retentive moderators (the old thePPK forum for example ) who would scold people for starting a new thread on subject X when existing threads, no matter how old, on subject X existed.

It might be that those posters thought they were just being good web citizens.
 
Back when web boards were still the thing, there were anal retentive moderators (the old thePPK forum for example ) who would scold people for starting a new thread on subject X when existing threads, no matter how old, on subject X existed.

It might be that those posters thought they were just being good web citizens.

I check to see if there is a similar thread before I make a new one.

But that bugs me is that someone new comes along and answers a question that was posted not only a long time ago but by a member who no longer is active.

Yes. sometimes the question might have universal appeal. but if the question is somewhat specific to the original poster and then the newbie spends a lot of time answering the question.... well i feel like the newbie is just wasting time and effort.
 
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Reactions: Tom L.
I personally am ambivalent about necro threads because I do think people change, becoming smarter, more mature, or educated, or more sober with time. Ha ha. So establishing everyone's history from five to ten years ago or even six months ago can give a weird impression of a person. It also appeals to stalkers (though I don't see that as an issue on a veg forum like I might suspect in other places).

On the other hand, necro threads can supply important information to the current conversation. Even very specific questions may serve someone.
 

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