Greetings DSYoungEsq and welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board!
Just so you know, this thread is 2 days/years/decades old and not all of the upthread posters are currently active. No worries, maybe a few of the other regulars will have something to add. Just giving everyone a heads up.
That’s all I have to say here, but welcome aboard!
Another approach is
Note: This thread is 2 days/years/decades old!!
Brief comment brief comment brief comment lorem ipsum lapsang souchong.
ETA, FYI: I never found the zombie joke to be funny, and I always found it unwelcoming. I’ve laughed at RL zombie jokes: it’s just this iteration that doesn’t work for me.
A zombie joke is not going to send a zombie-resurrecting newbie running for the hills. He or she will either:
[ul]
[li]Understand the reference[/li][li]Initially not understand the reference, then get it and rub their hands with glee because now they can zombie-bomb some other unsuspecting newbie, or[/li][li]Not care[/li][/ul]
mmm
I actually think it would be more welcoming to new users to automatically lock old threads than to allow them to cluelessly bump a thread they don’t realize is old. Even if there are no zombie jokes, the revival of a thread by a new poster is almost certain to be greeted with a correction, confusion, or annoyance. The person the newbie is responding to often hasn’t posted in years anyway, and if the newbie has anything interesting to say that’s not just a direct response to an old post then they can start a new thread.
The “quarry” joke is only funny to you and your fans, not because they think the joke is funny, but because you and your fans knows it annoys people. This is how juveniles behave, not well reasoned adults…
Note that does not say that repeating a running gag more often makes it funnier, but rather that the humor derives from “how often it is repeated.” Repeating a running gag too often makes it less funny, not more funny.
Serious question: how many thread necromancers actually DO stick around at all? Because the vast majority that I see look a lot like a drive by bloviate inspired by a frenzied or passion-fueled google marathon.
If that’s the case, then it doesn’t hugely matter to the newest ‘OP’ (from the zombified thread context) if the next 3 or 6 or 12 posts are dumb zombie jokes because they’re not gonna be looking around after- they didn’t want a discussion, they wanted a platform to spout from.
Where it might matter is if it bugs the shit out of your fellow regulars (or the mods) - and to that point it seems a lot more reasonable to ask people to tone it down, except that ‘quarries’ and ‘regards’ and ‘hi opals’ all pop up all the damn time and nothing gets done about them. So this very much seems like a personal posting quirk.
Relatedly, I appreciate knowing that it’s a zombie thread, and while the jokes are dumb, they aren’t offensive. I would say the alternative where a regular posts a quote of their earlier response with language to the point of ‘oh i was going to congratulate this poster on their sagacity and perspicacity and general dashing good looks, but then i realized it was ME haha, I’m so clever and witty’ is waaaaay more likely to be annoying. If I am going to be alerted in-thread via poster content that i’m in a zombie, I’d rather see 5 ‘braaaaaaaains’ than one ‘oh look at me and how i was so damn clever 5 years ago wasn’t i’ but maybe that’s a minority preference.
Well, I actually do find them funny, when they are a pun or somehow worked into a response to the thread. But then I’m well aware that my sense of humour is pretty much one of a kind.
These. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve realized in time to edit my response only because the zombie jokes caught my eye. I simply don’t check the date on OPs, and I’ve never been able to develop the habit.
Well, yes, there are several that don’t, but they’re stuck with me for now.
I do totally agree with this.
What I do find incredibly unwelcoming are the snippy posts along the lines of:
Sharing an in-joke (within the context of an addition to the thread)seems far more welcoming to me.
Either way, the zombie jokes evolved to fill a niche, and if the Mods want them gone I suggest filling the niche some other way. I don’t agree with locking threads unless they are somehow malicious.
The automatic warning linked to above would only discourage the necromancer, and would do nothing to warn the subsequent posters. So it seems to me it would discourage new posters more than any of the other methods, while doing nothing to fill the niche.
Is there some option as simple as making the dates turn red after a year has passed? Something that would passively alert us to the age of the thread without interrupting the train of thought?
No. It has to be done 8000 times AND be funny both the first time and the 8000th. This misses. The only “joke” worse than this one (here) is the “Hi Opal” followed closely by the Quarry one. Worse only because at least the Braaaiiins (sort of) warns people of the oldness of the thread, albeit clumsily.
