The John Birch thread from 2005…how on earth does this get resurrected? When scrolling down through threads, I generally won’t even look at one that hasn’t had a new entry for a day. Then I stop scrolling down. It seems like you would have to be actively TRYING to locate a thread that old. Ok, so, now you realize how old it is…they you ADD to it? Unless you’re new to the board, you know that resurrecting a zombie thread is frowned upon. Why not just start a new thread?
Also, to change the subject, I always wondered why there couldn’t be a forum dedicated to questions re: the administration of this board, questions about the moderation, etc., rather than lumping them in with The Pit (which seems pretty danged incongruous or at least confusing to me.) I don’t like having to go to The Pit just to ask a question or make a statement like this. Nothing is being remotely pitted…I’m not mad. Why The Pit?
Well, I’ve done it before - somebody links to an old thread for information or humor or whatever, and I open it in a new tab, and then I get to reading it and forget it’s not current and I reply. I just don’t really look at the dates when I’m reading a thread, is all.
You can always open it in ATMB. I’ve noticed most do not get moved if they are questions and not annoyances or pittings.
In fact they did update the description in the last year, it now reads:
As to the Zombies, I know of a few ways. New posters as you mentioned, posters following a link from another thread and not paying attention to the date and as you mentioned a search and ignoring the date which seems very absent minded to me.
That was actually an interesting thread. It would have been nice if it was not a Zombie.
One common way is the search function (well - not at the moment, obviously). Before asking their question, people search for an existing thread on the subject. This is a good thing. Then they find a thread that almost answers their question, don’t check the date to notice that it’s five years old, and post something at the end of it.
Another vote for searching and then forgetting you are reading a searched thread. You’ll also notice, alot of zombie threads (that weren’t linked to in another current thread) are usually at least a page long (or close to it), by then the person has forgetten that it’s old. But getting to it via a link seems to be the most popular way. One thing I’ve done from time to time is when I link to an old thread, I’ll ask a mod to close the ond one just to avoid confusion.
I’ve almost brought zombies back to life. When I’ve run through all the “new posts” and I still want More Dope, I used to open up Mundane or other forums, and browse to page 666, and just go from there. There’s lots of great old threads to read.
Usually, however, I’m well aware I’m splashing about in the past, and don’t post. But I’m tempted! They’re good threads, still.
We’ve relaxed our stance somewhat on “zombie” threads – we used to close them all whenever we saw one. But with all the returning posters we’ve been more tolerant and tend to deal with this more on a case by case basis.
You can always open a new thread and link to the old one – we prefer that, really – but in some cases it makes more sense to return to the old one. It depends.
I think that is a reasonable policy, especially since I accidentally posted to a three year old thread. The moderators didn’t spank me too hard for that.
