I like the idea of allowing old threads to be re-opened by new posts. But there have been moments of confusion where people (and I include myself) do not notice that the early posts in a thread are several years old.
Is it possible to set up a system so older posts (say any post over six months) have a distinctive look. Something like maybe a different background color or different font. That way we’d notice right away that this is a zombie thread and which posts are zombies and which posts are new. We could skip right to where the new stuff starts rather than having to reread old posts or scan through the submission dates. And we wouldn’t have that moment of melancholy when we think “Hey! Eve’s back on the board!” and then realize it’s a post she made in 2004.
What you need is a plugin that will only mark a thread as “bumped” or “zombie” after a certain length of time since the last activity, say six or nine months (perhaps a new icon, or just a [ZOMBIE] in the thread title.
Then it should add a new marker post at the beginning of the thread saying something like “This thread is X old, and has been bumped. To go to the new post in this thread, click here” and then, again, immediately before the new post that bumped it, it also puts in a second new marker post that says “this is an old thread that has been bumped. The posts beyond this point are current.”
I should clarify that the marking of the thread as a Zombie should only occur if and when a new post is added, rather than just a matter of course for all old threads.
It’s possible but this doesn’t really address the way that I (and I assume many others) read a thread.
If I see an thread title that looks interesting, I click on the thread and start at the first post. I don’t normally notice the dates. So I wouldn’t see a “this is a zombie thread” post until I had already read the pages of zombie posts.
What’s happened to me on a few occasions is I’ll be reading a thread and have thought of something I wanted to say on the topic. And then I’ll see a post by me in which I’ll have already said it. That’s when I’ll check and realize that the posts I’ve been reading (and the one I wrote) were all written several years ago.
It seems to me that all the suggestions so far (other than the different color) isn’t going to help. If people don’t notice the dates on posts, they’re also not likely to notice any other indicators. Even the different color posts may not be noticed by some. Locking threads (which other boards do) may be the only “real” way to deal with the problem (if it really is a problem).
Isn’t this more of a solution in search of a problem?
As long as it’s not a really spectacular fight/flame-out, who cares if the thread is old or not, as long as someone’s adding something new to it?
The weird anti-“zombie” thread culture here has never made sense to me. If someone started a thread on an episode of Lost from (say) 2005 and I just now saw or rewatched the episode, why bother to make a new thread, when I could add to the existing one?
Which is why it is now policy to not lock zombies, unless there’s a particular reason to (argumentative thread with many posts by people no longer active here, e.g.).
It’s a simple matter to set up a script that runs once a week or so and looks for threads where the last post is older than XX days. When it finds them, it marks the thread closed.
I don’t have any problem with zombie threads being resurrected, but I think a lot of time people do it in expectation that their response will be relevant to the OP or the other posters when they may be long gone from here. A way to inform them before writing their post would be convenient for both them and those who read it afterward.
I’d find it a little disconcerting if there was a thread about “What’s your alltime favorite movie?” and somebody else posted “Little Nemo’s alltime favorite movie is Casablanca.”