When an older thread is rezzed, it invariably points either to the first post (if I never viewed it before, or it predates the switchover from vBulletin–I think on that latter score), or to whichever post I had last read.
So this means when someone rezzes a zombie thread, unless I had read the very last post years ago before the rezzing, I have to scroll down and down to find out where the new posts are.
So this is a long shot, but any way to tell Discourse that, for all threads older than X, I want to have all of their pointers set to the very end, so that when I go to read it I don’t have to furiously scroll to find the new ones. If that can be done only when I see or click on said thread, vs. doing it retroactively for every single old thread, even better.
Not sure if you’re on a computer or a device. But on a computer, just hit the End key and it takes you to the end (Last Post).
A little harder on phones and pads.
One way for a phone: Click the subject of the thread and it takes to the first post. At the bottom is the post slider, click that and scroll the vertical slider that pops up to the end.
I did a little testing, it looks like tapping anywhere on the thread will bring up the and post slider.
On a phone, tap on the [123/456] progress indicator at the lower right. That pops up a pop-up with a slider and a [jump to…] button at lower left. Tap the [jump to…], which brings up another pop-up with boxes for jump to post #[__] of 456 or jump to date[__]. Entering any number bigger than the post count jumps you to the end. So if there’s 456 posts, just tap 500 into the box then tap [OK].
I didn’t experiment with how the jump to date works for a date between the last old post and the resurrecting post. And I’m out of time to post right now. But that might be the easiest way if Discourse is smart; just put in a date from last month and viola! maybe.
If you do test that out, come back and share please.
The downside to jumping to the end of a thread is then the whole thread becomes marked as read. If it turns out you hadn’t read the last 100 posts, that all of a sudden becomes a lot of reading to get to the end before losing your place.
If your real goal is to jump to where the recent posts start so you can pick up just the current conversation it turns out that’s easy.
The [jump to] date feature will jump to the first post that is at/after the date you enter. So assume there’s a zombie from say 2020 that ran a few weeks like most threads do before petering out. Now you notice it’s been resurrected. Just jump to a date about a month or two ago from today. You’ll end up between the last old post from 2020 and the first resurrecting post here in 2023. Easy peasy.
On a non-phone you can use the # keyboard shortcut to pop up that control panel. On a phone or computer you can tap/click the [123/456] thread progress indicator.
There is an extensive collection of keyboard shortcuts for everything. From the hamburger menu, at the extreme lower right (might have to scroll to see it) is a keyboard icon which brings up the keyboard shortcut menu. The “?” key does the same.
All the shortcuts are active when you are not keystroking in the post-composing textbox. But if you’re in the middle of composing a post as I am just now, you can still access the shortcut menu by tapping / clicking anywhere outside the edit box to move the focus, then pressing whichever key you know you need, e.g. # to jump to a post, or the “?” key to bring up the menu. To jump back into composing your post, type “C” or upper-case c for “compose”.
and post slider.
The right mouse button just brings up a generic Firefox menu.