I can’t wait to see what thread he resurrects next!
You didn’t spend an hour this morning killing zombie threads.
I think if he brings any more to life, the mods will put him down before they put the thread down.
He’s got two warnings already.
Sometimes people come to the board for the first time, look around, get all excited, and wade in on threads that suit their fancy.
These new folks don’t bother to read for a while to get the lay of the land, they don’t stop to read forum rules (which we admit are not always obvious and not always easy to grok even for established members of the Straight Dope community, let alone a newbie), they just reply and reply because this is interesting stuff.
We tend to give people the benefit of the doubt in these situations and attempt to counsel them. If they’re a legitimate poster who just got carried away they, um, moderate their behavior; they want to fit in.
If they keep on keeping on they’re trolling and you know what we do in that situation.
Make them bring cookies in for the whole class?
Heh. I do confess a certain nostalgic fondness for reading the occasional zombie thread but, as you rightly point out, I’m not the one who has to kill them.
There’s never a piano around when you need one.
What’s the difference between a dormant thread and a zombie thread?
The necroposter of the week revived a thread that was last posted to in late June. I reported the revival for a Mod Ruling ™. For my 2 trillion Zimbabwe Third Dollars worth, three months of dormancy for a non-time-sensitive discussion wouldn’t be a zombie thread, especially if somebody else contributes to the discussion (which did happen).
(Note: the Zimbabwe Third Dollar was revoked about a year ago, for the Zimbabwe Fourth Dollar. The ZW4D is not in circulation, as Zimbabwe cannot afford to buy the materials to print its currency. So 2 * 10^9 ZW3D has no cash value.)
Another board I belong to has a zombie thread feature, 3 threads that are at least three years old are featured daily for perusal. I never tried to post to one, so I don’t know if they’re locked.
Maybe something like that can happen here? Lock the thread, of course. I’d love to see the LOTR by other authors or the Trouble with Blimps come around again…
In a perfect world most every thread that’s more than six months old would automatically pass into “read only” status.
We hope for that but in the meantime we have the most imperfect Straight Dope world where old threads are sometimes an issue.
There is an important distinction here – we want to promote people coming here, seeing what’s available, and getting all excited – that’s great, that’s what brought most of us to the Straight Dope in the first place. Of course we don’t want to put up with trolls either – but we should look before we shoot.
I’ve never understood the SDMB’s concern about “zombie” threads.
Yeah, if it’s a banning thread or a very, VERY heated issue or something, I get it, but who cares if a video game thread from 2005 or a pit-thread from 2006 gets bumped? The only reason I’ve heard is “Some of these posters are no longer around” and my response is “…and?”. Either the poster was banned, in which case “Too bad for them.” or they left on their own and can come back on their own if it’s such a pressing issue to them.
Frankly, I’d love to see some old GD threads bumped once the situation changes. I’d rather see a thread that shows the continuity of events than a series of threads. There are so many great threads that can be reconsidered and can provide a springboard for new discussion that it seems a shame to “waste” them by treating them as “read-only”.
Is this an issue worth reconsidering?
Well, in quite a few of his bumped threads, he seemed to do it only to levy “astroturfing” allegations against the OPs of the threads (all regular posters of this board), accusing them of being secret shills for the companies they mention.
On the other hand, it’s a little cool that when the time comes, we’ll be in the hands of experienced Zombie killers.
We usually make 'em stand in the front of the room and recite The Song of Hiawatha but generally as soon as they say “By the shore of Gitche Gumee” everybody starts giggling and things go downhill from there. 
No, silly. They have to bring pie.
The zombie thread issue really only applies to certain forums. We don’t want zombie threads in the Pit, for example, because it’s often just scratching at old scabs. Time heals. We are uncomfortable with zombie threads in MPSIMS and IMHO for similar reasons; a “hot” issue last year can be pretty much dead now. Plus, many of the posters are no longer around, or wouldn’t re-engage in the thread.
We care less in Cafe Society, Comments of Cecil, Comments on Staff. There’s still a little discomfort, because the resurrectionist may be responding to someone who’s no longer posting. However, generally, we don’t care about thread revivals there.
However, there’s a diff between honest re-awakening of an old thread, and just posting to it. Resurrecting an old thread to post, “Me too” or “No way” or some similar non-content post, that’s just a waste of everyone’s time. People see a new post in an interesting topic, and may want to read the whole thread, just to find the new post is has no content.
Rousing up old threads to make unwarranted allegations against posters… that’s probably trolling. However, we will give benefit of the doubt; at least, until there’s no doubt.
I’d disagree about IMHO or GD (I’m guessing you’d put GD here). For me, it’s sometimes interesting to go back and look at an issue that had everyone in hysterics a year or two later and say “Wow–we were that upset about…nothing!” or “Who’d have thought that this issue then would lead to that issue now?!”
I completely agree with this–if a thread is bumped, the bump would need to have substantial content, not just a “me too” or “this”.
Again, agree completely.
I’m not so much talking about the current situation, just the overall idea that bumping old threads is bad… 
Wait, it wasn’t just my thread then? All morning I felt special; now I just feel like one of the crowd again.
It’s not a “hard 'n fast” rule, but there are some real reasons behind it.
For example, leaping in to a four-year-old thread to repeat an argument that’s already been made or to answer a question that’s already been answered doesn’t contribute anything to the boards.
As perhaps a better example, if you pile on against people who aren’t here anymore or aren’t watching the thread, they don’t have an opportunity to defend themselves.
And, finally, the SDMB crowd includes quite a few TLDR (too long, didn’t read) people. They’ll look at the context before posting in a brand-new shiny thread that’s 30 or 40 posts long, but leap into that big long zombie without bothering to read the thread first, so we resurrect a lot of long-ago-resolved issues that way.
If it makes you feel any better, we could all pretend that we believe sethness and that you’re really just a shill for Yahoo who’s spent the last 8 years posting normally just so you could astroturf for them in their time of need.
I have permitted a few zombies in GD. However, the vast majority of zombie, there, fall into the categories of “me too” or an attack on a point long since resolved. Someone reviving a thread just to claim that GW Bush is a liar does nothing but invite all the partisans to wander back in looking for a knife fight.
The odds on a thread from more than a year ago including posters who no longer participate, (by their choice or ours), is nearly 100%, so we have people picking fights with nonexistent posters. For one thing, when a zombie is re-opened, the “go to most recent post” feature does not work that well and instead of posters going to the end, seeing a (rare) post that says, “let’s reconsider this brouhaha,” we generally find a comment pointing to another post leading to an argument.
As noted, I have permitted, (and even re-opened), zombies when requested if I feel it is not going to turn into a trainwreck, but most zombies in GD are more trouble than they are worth.