Is it weird? Is it rude? Should threads be archived?
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.
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
If it’s a question that has no answer (or no useful answer) it’s totally fine to comment with an answer.
I figure that someone will eventually stumble across the same thread that I did if they have a similar question. Might as well contribute and share some knowledge.
My favorite was a specific problem I had modding Morrowind on Linux years ago and posting to reddit.
Only for years to pass and I search for the same problem, only to find my own damn post with no replies.
I never understood the taboo.
It’s a holdover from old BBS forum style.
When you reply to an ancient thread, it immediately gets pushed to the top of the board. Now everyone basically is wondering what this 5 year old topic is doing on the first page. And they might have to read through several pages of messages to understand what the hell the newest reply is about because nobody remembers the topic in the first place.
With Reddit/Lemmy, the upvote system means it really doesn’t matter at all if you reply to an ancient thread, it won’t jump to the front page for anyone.
yes it will for those who (like me) are sorting by “new comments”
But you know what you’re getting into, then, so it’s not confusing or a problem.
Ah yes, that would have been annoying. I started in the era of small web forums where activity was split out from recency by page or dialog.
Me neither, but someone commented here it’s a holdover from the days of forums where a new reply to an old thread would instantly put that thread at the top of the forums because the order was always latest reply. This was found annoying by some people especially if the new reply was short and meaningless or something. Makes more sense to me now.
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’ll let you know in a year.
I acknowledge it. I preface my post with something, usually /rezz or I’ll comment “I know this is old but…”
The older the thread the funnier necroing is. If the forums I was on in middle school were still around you can bet I’d be bumping some of those threads just for teh lulz.
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.
If you’re replying to a conversation that’s not hot-hot-hot, it’s because there’s new info.
Of course update a thread with new info. Threads aren’t lettuce.
This dainty notion of FOMO-based gatekeeping - you missed out, and the thread is just too stale for you - is quaint but valueless.
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”.
“Dead” as in recent but crickets, or as in 2 years old but quiet?
If the former, fill yer boots and go wild. If the latter, then you’re necrobumping and have a circle of hell with your name on it.
I don’t make the rules…
