My recollection from the olden times is that there were regarded as zombie threads and generally frowned on.
Still the case? Or does it depend on the circumstance?
If the thread was one with a lot of rancor and/or modding needing, reviving it is not welcomed.
Generally best not to revive GD or P&E thread as so many fall in that category.
But for The Cafe, MPSIMS, FQ (was GQ) and IMHO, I see no problems in general.
Well, saving threads implies that one is free to explore them and, if one has a fresh view or comment, revive the thread with that comment. Otherwise, why keep them around? Also, circumstances in life can change significantly over time. so that might give cause to revive discussion on certain issues.
I agree with Jasmine. If there is a thread about charges being filed against Jimbo Terwilliger I think an update a few years later when the trial is over is preferred over a new one as we can go back and easily review the case via previous threads. I could go either way if there is a thread on cold fusion that peters out and someone revives it about a new breakthrough. But replying to a question someone had in 2010 (unless really new and interesting) seems like zombie resurrection - especially if it repeats an earlier answer.
We don’t want to punish newbies who may have arrived here via a google search and haven’t checked the dates and therefore don’t realize they might be resurrecting a 20 year old thread. That said, there is a general expectation that zombies should not be pointlessly resurrected.
FQ (GQ) has always been more strict about this than other forums, and back in the day, if a zombie was raised without anything new or significant to contribute it was standard practice to close the thread. These days we don’t close raised zombies, even if they were pointlessly raised, since new and interesting conversations can result from the resurrection. FQ is still a bit less tolerant than other forums. If you raise a thread in FQ just to make a joke, chances are it isn’t going to go over as well as if you had done the same thing in MPSIMS.
But in general, as @What_Exit said, reviving a thread isn’t generally a problem unless it was a problematic thread originally.
And of course if you do have new information or something significant to contribute, reviving a zombie has always been acceptable, even back in the old days.
Also, if a newbie does happen to revive a thread because they didn’t realize it was old, please don’t flood the thread with zombie jokes. That comes off as very hostile to a newbie who just didn’t know any better.
I’m guessing if it’s a thread about zombies it’s probably okay.
Which is easy to do because of the cutesy format of the displayed dates.
If you revive an old thread, discourse gives a warning
Which looks somewhat like this :-
Revive this topic?
The last reply to this topic was almost 3 years ago. Your reply will bump the topic to the top of its list and notify anyone previously involved in the conversation.
Are you sure you want to continue this old conversation?
… so there’s no excuse !
People who do it clearly don’t care about that. So it’s not accidental.
This is the same Discourse that gives a “similar topic warning” when there’s no similarity at all. Posters get inured to warnings and just ignore them.