Ancient ones. Sure, I did it once as a joke. Found the oldest Pit thread I could that sank like a stone with only the OP and no responses…but that was mischief.
Recently a very good thread was roused after 3 years of slumber only to be shut down and put to sleep for good. Why is this? I mean apart from it being a “rule” and all. What’s the intent behind the rule? If it’s a matter of resources then one big thread would be better than two little threads, each with its own number and molecule on the hard drive.
Ancient threads will, naturally, have posts from ancient posters. On some occasions, they will reflect the views of posters who have since changed their views (greatly or slightly) who will then find themselves challenged (or attacked) to defend positions they no longer hold. On some occasions, the posters will have since left the board, either through a choice to retire or through banning, and inattentive posters will be tempted to challenge (or attack) them for their views when they are no longer here to defends themselves. On several occasions, old threads have resurfaced to open old wounds between posters who have since reconciled, but would just as soon not have to be reminded of their previous antagonism or, especially, have third parties bring those earlier conflicts back from the dead.
Resurrecting old threads is not inherently evil, but they have raised so many problems that we have decided that it is simply not a good idea to permit the practice.
If the topic of an old thread deserves to be resurrected, then the better way to handle it is to open a new thread that includes a link to the older thread. In that way, no poster accidentally begins to respond to a long-dead issue thinking that it is current. The response is OK, but everyone should be aware that it is based on an old discussion, rather than thinking that every post is recent.
(Yes, we are aware that people could take the time to look at the date/time stamps on each post and realize that the thread is not recent, but the reality is that too many people do not actually do that. It is simply easier on all concerned if the old threads are not given the zombie treatment. The “new thread with link to old” is a perfectly adequate solution and it is the one we prefer.)
Don’t bet on it. It’s all too easy to click on a linked thread, get involved in reading it through then replying without thinking about the thread date.
Inigo Montoya, the short answer is that we don’t like trapdoors into the past.
Think about it: Humans live on time’s arrow, where the past, the present, and the future all have their own seperate places. There’s no chance for someone to stumble into last Thursday or two weeks from Monday. Things work out pretty well because we aren’t terminally confused about the date. (Well, things work out pretty well because those who are terminally confused about the date can be put away into nuthouses or boardrooms or Oval Offices so they don’t hassle everyone else.)
The message board world doesn’t really have that luxury. The past blends into the present here quite readily, and there are traps strewn about for the unwary that lead them right into late last January or three years ago last May. Unless something is done, confusion becomes rampant. The human mind simply doesn’t do very well when the past refuses to stay passed.
tomndebb alluded to some of the concrete things that might go wrong, but it all comes down to this: We need to emulate time’s arrow if we want to have a minimally-confusing SDMB.
I remember hearing something like bumping old threads made the process of indexing the board for searches much more difficult. This was quite sometime ago and related to an older version that used to require the board to be turned off for an hour a day.
I have almost done this on several occasions when someone linked to an old thread. Fortunately, up to now, I have always caught myself before I clicked on the “submit” button.
I wonder if it would be possible either in VBulletin or in some “bot” script that could be run once a week to automatically close any threads where the last post was more than 6 months ago.
I dunno if that would be such a good idea. I have an image of “I Bot-Mod” preemptively closing threads, banning the Flesh-Mods immediately and then nuking all users with a disproportionately high MPSIMS/GQ ratio.
It’d get bad fast. Nothing but ignorance-fighting would remain. And who wants that?
Yes, it would be trivially easy to do. You could set a cron job to run automatically at whatever intervals you like, preferably at the same time as the regular backups are performed. It’s also possible to incorporate a manual mass lock feature into the admin control panel. I created just such a tool for the now-defunct tForum bulletin board software–a free, PHP-based open-source BB package similar to vBulletin.
Yep. Somehow an old thread (last year) about “Talk like a pirate day” had got dragged up to the front page. Since it was close to the day I posted to the thread, thinking it was new, and it got promptly locked. So in this case I had no idea.
There’s another problem, in that certain posters think their own views are so interesting (yet so neglected) that they have to go and resurrect their own threads with maddeningly regularity. That crowds out the newer threads on the first page of the forum listing of thread titles. While that is not the main problem of thread bumping, it is the SDMB equivalent of cutting in line-- my views should get more attention than other people’s views.
I still think that the mods and admins should write a script to close any thread older than three months (or whatever date they determine is adequate). Sure, the first pass will take a long time, but assuming it’s run on a daily basis it won’t take that long after that.
I always get milldy pissed off when I’m reading a thread, investing time into it, then I realize it’s several years old. It makes me feel like I’ve been wasting my time. Yeah, I know, as opposed to the highly productive use of my time that is reading current threads.
Doing so would require different rules for different forums, given that in Café Society it’s permissible to revive old threads depending on the circumstances.
There ya go. I asked in ‘About This Message Board’, why the date that the OP posted couldn’t be placed under the OP’s name. Then, you’ve got a chance to go right on by, and not waste 10 minutes before you notice that the thread had whiskers.
‘Tuba Diva’ blew me off due to reasons that I didn’t get.
Dates are listed on individual posts - I normally don’t even glance at them, nor would I no matter where they’re positioned. I just assume everything’s current until something tips me off.