I’m not complaining, just wondering.
Not really. I’m not opposed to them in theory, but in practice, we’re getting a lot of brand-new posters signing up to give their opinion or personal story on some issue by dredging up an ancient thread about it. They tend to add little of value, while confusing the rest of us into thinking a current conversation is going on.
And they usually don’t add anything new to the conversation. Sometimes they add something vaguely creepy but not creepy enough to be interesting.
You are not alone.
In fact, I used to be pro-zombie, but now that there are so many being revived, I think we were better off killing them off.
Yeah, I’ve changed my thoughts there as well. If it were possible to lock all threads after six months of inactivity, so that anyone who wanted to continue such a discussion was obliged to open a new thread and link to the old one, I would be happy.
I also would like some sugar-free ginger snaps.
Yeah, I am becoming more and more disenchanted with resurrected zombies.
I don’t have any ginger snaps. How about a kitteh?
Rhymers do not eat kittehs, kittens, kitties, kitty-cats, or anything else that can be described as an immature feline except in extreme periods of dearth. There is a sacred story that explains why.
I feel the same way. It’s especially annoying when you see that some newbie reopened a zombie thread with a rant arguing against the OP’s position. Chances are the OP isn’t even reading this board anymore.
I think there are some message boards that automatically lock threads after a certain amount of inactivity, say six months.
Go back to killing them with fire. Almost all of them that I’ve seen revived were spammers or drive-by posters, the inevitable “BRAAIIINNS” jokes, and more often than not are locked anyway.
Do Rhymers eat gingersnaps shaped like kittehs?
I am curious as to why there isn’t a warning when you go to post on an old thread? At another message board I go to, which appears to have the same basic board setup when you try to post to a thread that is over x number of days old there is a warning at the base of the post.
I just clicked on an old thread over there and this is what it shows:
*This thread is more then 2052 days old. It is very likely that it does not need any further discussion and thus bumping it serves no purpose.
If you feel it is necessary to make a new reply,you can still do so though.
<then there is a box they have to click> I am aware that this Thread is rather old but I want to make a reply.*
If something like that is there, it would appear that someone wanting to activate an old thread would have to make a very conscious decision to do so, and it would eliminate the spammers and much of the drive by posters in my opinion. Does this board have that ability?
Of course. Those are not kittehs, they are cookies.
Or at least cookie-like objects. (Ginger snaps? Bah.)
It is true that, while ginger snaps are technically cookies, they are so superior to the rest of the genus that they really deserve separate category. I should not wish to insult the inventor of ginger snaps by implying that oatmeal raisin cookies, Oreos, thin mints, or the abomininations known as chocolate chip chookies were compable to her creation.
Disks of ambrosia?
I also dislike zombie threads for the reasons people have listed. It’s particularly annoying when you start to reply only to notice that most of the discussion six years old and your reply is probably pointless.
On very rare occasions it might be useful to revive a thread if there’s new information related to the OP. (For example, a criminal finally comes to trial in a famous case, or a missing person is found.) But it seems like those situations could easily be accommodated by creating a new thread and linking back to the original.
We decided to relax the rule in response to the popular view that killing them was rude to newbies and quashed newly revived discussion in mid-discuss.
I myself find them annoying because, like most of you, I’m all set for a juicy discussion and find … a rotting corpse. Most distressing.
I find it helps to think that all of my replies are pointless and won’t be read by whoever I’m addressing in the thread. 
That was said as a mock, but it’s true nonetheless. What makes you think your reply in a thread will be read by the person who made the thread or the person you responded to? Plenty of people don’t return to threads they post in, zombies are no different.
I use Tapatalk on my iPhone, most of the time, to post on the SDMB these days. There is an easily accessed “Participated” tab. I find it amusing when I a thread I posted in 5,6,7,8, even 9 years ago floats to the top again. Zombie threads I didn’t post in still fool me sometimes. It’s usually easy to spot them though. If a thread that wasn’t there when you checked the SDMB yesterday has hundreds of replies, it’s a zombie. Zombies are only minor annoyances to me.
I actually think they are kind of fun, sometimes. It’s interesting to see comments by posters who have been BANNED or no longer post on the board, for one reason or another…or to see how some posters have changed over time (or even how I myself have changed over time).
The only time I can recall being annoyed by a zombie thread recently was when someone resurrected a 9/11 Truffer thread in GD that was over 25 pages long (and highly rancorous) to post a couple of lines of Truther non-sense that had probably been covered about a hundred times previously in that thread alone. It was obvious that the person had not read anything at all in the thread, and probably found it on Google and decided to join up just to enlighten us all with his insights into the events of 9/11.
-XT
I don’t mind them that much.
I think part of the problem is new people come here used to other sites, and some sites will rip you a new one for opening a new thread if there’s an old thread (even really old) on the subject matter, and some other sites will automatically lock threads too old to reply to.
I like the warning idea mentioned upthread, but that would probably need some sort of add on or tinkering to the board software, and you know how that usually goes around here. (not complaining, just saying)