I am not sure this is the right place for this, but here it goes:
I would like to hear from people who have raised zombie threads. How did it happen? How did you run into that thread? Did you really not notice it was an old one? Did you end up opening a new one?
We recently had someone mistake the dates and believe a year old thread was only a week old. That is the type of error I would easily commit twice an hour if I were in the right place. But with threads showing in chronological order and clipping the oldest, I don’t think I have ever ran into an old thread. At least not without trying (searching).
Thank you! (I don’t know the answer.) But I’ve always wondered–HOW do people raise zombie threads? If you’re searching through the archive, you must be somewhat aware that you’re going to post in an old thread, no?
I’ve raised at least one zombie that I can think of. I did it deliberately, too.
At the time of the sinking of the USS Oriskany, I did a quick search to make sure I wasn’t duplicating another extant thread on the topic.
I found, instead, a thread about the decision to sink the Oriskany to create an artificial reef. So, since the sinking I was sharing was directly related to the original thread, I chose to post into the old thread, raising it from the dead. Here 's the thread in question.
And no one killed it, either, so I have to admit I’d consider doing the same thing in similar circumstances.
(I’ve also posted to zombie threads that other posters have raised, but that’s another issue. If the last post in a thread is current, I’m not going to go looking too hard to make sure the thread isn’t a revenant.)
It’s very easy to do this if you search for threads on a regular basis.
Even if you notice that it’s an old thread when you start reading, if you get wrapped up in the discussion topic itself, it’s very easy to forget that you’re reading an old thread by the time you’ve reached its end and post to it without even thinking.
Then there was a time when I bumped a thread after just a few months to psot some additional info about the topic (which I didn’t feel warranted an entirely new thread) and someone reported that as a zombie thread. I felt that was overly zealous personally.
I sent one that was several years old looking for bra-a-a-ins just recently. I had control-clicked some new threads to open in new tabs, along with one old thread that was being discussed and was linked to from a new thread. I was just skimming through all of them and just absent-mindedly replied to the old one, not noticing the date. :smack:
It’s very easy, as lavenderviolet pointed out, to search for something on a topic and get really involved in the discussion and forget it isn’t current. (I mean, I never look at the dates, why would I?) Additionally, when somebody links to a thread the same thing can happen, especally if I don’t read it right away and let it sit in the far right tab so I forget howI got to it.
You don’t even need to be searching. Sometimes there can be a link to an old thread from another post.
One can read through it, and forget that it’s a zombie, or not even notice in the first place. I’ve come close to raising one thatawise. Perhaps I even have, unwittingly.
What’s the general rule on zombies? How long since the last post before it is considered dead? 6 months? One year? Two? Can’t TPTB create a DNR application so we can’t resurrect them?
Sometimes I in my searches I’ll run across a great thread that I would like to post to but it has been moldering in the vegetable bin for so long that it has turned to slime. Since I don’t want to bring it back to life I’ll create a new thread and, before you can say, “George Romero,” someone will reference the original thread.
Mostly it depends on the thread, the subject, the age, what you’re contributing and the mod who comes across it. So in other words it’s pretty subjective. IANAMOD, but usually GQ and CS zombies tend to shamble along a lot longer than other ones as long as the new posts contain pertinent information.
I tend to assume most of it comes from old threads linked to in new threads. I’ve done that one once or twice.
ISTR that when I first joined, too, I was admonished for raising a graveyard full of ghouls in MPSIMS. After reading through the threads that looked interesting on the first page, I just kept going. :smack:
It’s been discussed. The problem is that there are some zombies that can legitimately be raised for updates a long time after they die, to make sure that the people who originally subscribed to it all see it. Not to mention that zombie threads are more acceptable in CS and GQ, as mentioned above.
