Sorry if this question has already been brought up.
But I’ve been seeing more than a few threads resurrected recently after more than 10 years, and it really begs the question of, do these people even read the date of the last post? Particularly in cases where the majority of the people in the thread have since been banned or even passed away.
Should there be a time limit to a thread, beyond which no further posts can be made?
I hope not.
Sometimes the resurrector brings a new insight or experience to bear. Who cares how old the OP so long as ignorance is being fought?
And, as a few recent zombies attest, sometimes there’s a lotta life in the thread - new posters, new ideas, new discussions.
Let them live!
How about locking anything over, say, 5 years old and having posters link to it in a new thread. Conversation thus continues, and people can reference the previous conversation without mistakenly trying to directly converse with those that cannot respond.
We generally handle these on a case-by-case situation. And it varies by forum.
Zombie threads from the Pit, or from MPSIMS or IMHO or ATMB, are frowned upon. They often involve issues no longer relevant. In Comments on Cecil’s Column, however, as Czarcasm notes, new comments often reflect newer information, etc. If there’s a discussion thread about CITIZEN KANE in Cafe Society, who cares if the earliest posts were years ago?
Some mods are now trying to post a “footnote” in the first post of a zombie thread, to alert readers to check the dates of the posts. No point in getting upset about something someone said two years ago. However, the alert is obviously ex post facto. It’s not ideal, but it’s not unreasonable.
I fully agree. I don’t see what difference it makes if someone picks up a thread that’s a month old or 11 years old. Who cares.
How about we automatically lock all ATMB threads asking about locking zombie threads? Not only has this question been brought up, it’s probably been brought 10 times a year.
It’s funny, if someone starts a thread that’s already been done before people will trip over themselves to link to the old thread to tell the OP that ‘we’ve done this before’. But if the OP had revived the old thread they’ll get a bunch of zombie jokes and a (let’s be honest) 50/50 shot of a having it locked even though zombie threads are allowed.
ETA: A few other things. No, often times the person didn’t see the date. If it’s a new poster they may have found the thread via google and if it’s a current user it’s easy to forget how far back you’ve searched. Something I liked on another message board (VB but I assume it was a hack) was that if the thread was more then X days old, when you hit submit it took you to another page where you had to acknowledge that you understood how old the thread was before you could continue. That probably cut down on a lot of the zombie threads.
I agree with letting them bump as well. One of my peeves with internet forums is everyone telling you to search for previous threads before creating a new one, then when you bump a previous thread, saying you should have created a new one. :smack:
The correct procedure is to resurrect one of the dozens of zombie threads on this subject and ask the question. 
You’ve just touched on one of the biggest inconsistencies relating to zombie threads. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Whatever rule works for one concept/thread is bound to fail for the next one.
The best personal advice is “read the date(s) of the OP and earliest posts.”
There’s no telling how many of my own threads I have “bumped” after a long stretch just to see what interest there might be to newcomers. Being charitable, I would guess that my success rate for actually reviving an old thread I started is about one in ten. On the other hand, the success rate of starting a new thread with a link to the older one is about one in twenty.
I want to know the amount of time that has passed before a thread is considered “old”. On another forum the software auto alerts you if a thread is over 120 days with out a post, and suggests starting a new thread.
What’s the rule here?
There is no hard and fast rule. Each forum has different criteria in these situations and what is appropriate and maybe even timely in one area is ancient and immaterial in another.
While sometimes old threads are revived by newcomers to the board who see something and want to comment, often old threads get dragged up by spammers. When we remove the spam posting from the old thread we are left with the old thread being hauled up for no apparent reason, which can be confusing to users. But we figure you don’t want to see the spam period – we don’t allow that stuff to live here – and so that’s just how it goes.
Never have understood the antipathy to zombies in general. It’s not like they’re going to eat your brains or turn you into a zombie, after all. 
And the topics are often interesting, and I’d never have seen them if someone hadn’t resurrected them.
Heated one-sided arguments with people that moved on/been banned/don’t give a shit/died are stooped.
I’ve seen a few examples where a newbie bumped a decade-old thread to provide the absolute, direct, to-the-point answer to a question that had previously gone to rest unanswered. Yeah, it’s rare, but those posts go directly to the purpose of the board, and should not under any circumstances be discouraged. If the price of that is that we put up with dozens of stupid bumps for every insightful one, so be it: The stupid bumps will quickly fade back into obscurity.
This.
I recall one where someone registered to post (to a zombie), made a unique contribution (post 35), and then the thread got locked because it was a zombie. The new poster never returned yet clearly had something to offer.
As I recall, it was that thread that prompted me to post this plea in ATMB which, although I may be mistaken, played a role in the policy change that led to zombie threads being generally tolerated thereafter.
Cool story
If you’re going to participate in ATMB, try to be less obnoxious than this.
Agreed, on that particular point; I thought about originally putting that qualifier in my post but got lazy. (Got–hah. Am.) These sorts of “omg zombies” threads tend to be anti-zombie without qualifiers, though.
I actually meant exactly what I said. It is a cool story. I went and read the thread, would have probably never known it existed, and it was cool. That the policy might have been changed because of the incident is also cool.
In my world, cool means good. Awesome even. Cool story = compliment. What else could it mean?
Ok. I thought you were doing one of those ironic “cool story, bro” things.
No worries. I actually despise that meme.
In retrospect I wish I had said, “That is cool. Thanks.”