I don’t have a problem with them, just curious. Is it a seasonal thing that always happens in school holidays, say, with an influx of new members? Or have we become more searchable lately? I thought we went fully Googleable a while back.
We’ve been searchable by Google for the last few months. If you look, you’ll notice a lot of the zombies are bumped by new members.
I thought we’d had Google searching for years? I could swear that that was implemented a couple of years ago.
Google indexing takes some time and I would think the board was fully indexed a long time ago, but I have no way to know. The board was made open to searching as part of the 2008 upgrade. Here’s another recent discussion of the phenomenon.
OK. I did do a search for “zombie” in thread titles, but my impression is that the rate of reanimation has jumped significantly in recent weeks, beyond the increase that we saw after Googlification.
I don’t know if there’s any way to keep track. I know it’s a truism among the mods that weird stuff happens more often at certain times of year, including vacation times for schools, but I am not sure there have been more thread revivals in the last couple of weeks.
We do seem to have more traffic than in times past – with the explosion of devices to access the web it’s easier than ever before to read the Dope – so that probably has something to do with it. It’s all new people who dunno because they haven’t been here before.
In the past few days, I have noticed several zombie threads from the early 2000s. I am curious as to why the zombie threads are getting reactivated, and have two theories.
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More people are at home for the holidays (which happened over a weekend) and can spend more time reading the Straight Dope instead of working.
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More people are at home because of the blizzard, and are going stir-crazy, and are reading the Straight Dope instead of killing their spouse.
So, based on your observations from the past, do zombie threads get activated more in times of inclement weather when people are more house-bound than normal? I don’t remember it being a big problem last year. However, last year, I don’t recall it being a huge, widespread blizzard. I remember it more as a series of “moderate” waves rather than one big event.
Or, is it more closely related to the holiday-on-a-weekend pattern?
Or, possibly, is this year seemingly bad because the severe weather happened during a holday weekend?
I think it’s more related to google indexing our site so quickly and attracting those who haven’t a clue as to customs and procedures. You know…the great unwashed.
Moved to ATMB from GQ. There are a couple of active discussions of the whole zombie deal, so this thread might get closed or merged into another. Short answer: I don’t know if there’s one specific cause, and it’s probably a bunch of things.
Merged two similar threads.
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More people who work in offices have little to do this week.
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More students at home with nothing to do.
Ewwwww googlification.
I think the holiday period has something to do with it.
I also think that Google may have gone through some recent algorithm changes and re-indexing. I know that my commercial websites have seen a dramatic drop in traffic recently, which would seem to indicate some kind of changes in Google.
It may be that this domain is now ranked higher by Google and is turning up near the top of results more often (while my domains have gotten screwed).
That’s Google for you. It can be quite arbitrary at times. Although giving the Dope a good ranking makes sense. It can be very useful in finding answers for difficult questions.
Regardless of the cause, zombies are cool.
Zombies are SO 2010.
Which is why we need to enjoy the hell out of them now before the new year starts on Saturday.
So what’s coming in on Saturday? Not vampires – they are so 20th century.
There was also a change in philosophy from the Mods not too long ago. Zombie threads used to get locked down almost immediately, so they would quickly disappear from view; now they are allowed to live out whatever undeath comes naturally.
Ghouls, apparently. I hear it’s going to be the Decade of Ghouls. (As I’m sure we all appreciate, the new decade doesn’t start until 2011 ;)).