Why is it that reviving old threads is sooooo bad?

[Razako]

Personally I find it annoying because I'll click on a thread and be reading through it thinking WTF? and then notice that it was posted like 3 years ago. Also people never even bump it with a useful comment. It's always something random like "seems expensive" or "cool laser man that's awesome". Then you get 3-4 posts flaming the thread necromancer.

Basically the reason why they need to be locked is because 90% of revived 2+year old threads aren't relevant anymore and they result in nothing but flaming/spam/confusion.

 

[Morgan]

I think it's kind of a balance. A reply that resurrects an old post needs to be both relevant to the post, and to current conditions. The reply also needs to be useful enough to not warrant people reading the old conversation up to that point to understand what the question/reply is about. When people reply to current posts, the other participants generally know what the post's current topic is about (which may differ a bit from the OP); that may not be the case with a necro-post.

I think many of the necro-posts do not strike that balance, and their reply might be better served as a new post, referencing the old post. If someone wants to renew interest in something, a fresh post can help summarize what information was provided in the old post on the same subject, and the discourse can continue.

I've seen some useful necro-posts though, and while people were quick to point out that the replying person was performing necromancy on an old post, it didn't seem that people were bothered by it. Other replies, however, are plain idiotic, like "lol" replies (which are idiotic in general), and replies to really old sales threads, etc.

Spot on. This is perhaps what I might do. I don't have a problem or reaction to a thread revival if it's relevant; the person is informing us the previous thread is old; there's movement of the thread. The only time to point out to a necromancer their error is when it is seen as a clear error. First post; pointless post, (and the necromancing probably is the excuse to mention it was a pointless post!); clearly not read the date stamp.

There has been some interesting archived info that has been recycled from old threads and it shows people are doing searches.

I wonder also if this discussion is partly a product of the fact old threads are not revived when actually they should be? I know I must be guilty of starting a new thread or two when there was one open a couple of weeks ago discussing the same? A new member making that mistake would be castigated for not searching. In my defence, searches these days tend to be a lot more specific than they used to be and it seems to be more difficult to make a truly effective one.

M

 

[ElektroFreak]

Basically the reason why they need to be locked is because 90% of revived 2+year old threads aren't relevant anymore and they result in nothing but flaming/spam/confusion.

I don't know if I agree that so many threads here are irrelevant because they are old. The technical workings and know-how regarding lasers haven't changed much in the past decade. Sure improvements have been made, but it's not like lasers no longer work the way they did 10 years ago. They work precisely the same, but some now use different raw materials.

I do agree with all comments concerning the relevance of the posts in question, but I believe that relevance is a concern in both new and old thread equally.