I asked myself this very question about a thread on copyright infringement in GD that wasn’t posted in since the 22nd of last month or so, and that’s only after it’d not been posted in since late November.
I decided in this case not to “resurrect” the thread, but what about you all? Do you refuse to post in threads that have dropped off the forum pages? That are older than a month?
Hmmm, within weeks. I think 6 would be about the maximum that I’d be comfortable with. You can always link to the old thread. Though if it’s really an interesting one and maybe a little unusual and you don’t feel you could do justice posting your own new thread, I don’t think two months would be too out of line.
Unless it was just pushed off the main page a matter of an hour or so before I wouldn’t resurrect it. This bothers me, though, because sometimes I’ll be asked a question in a buried thread and its not worth e-mailing the person about it but you still wish you could’ve contributed a post that would’ve possibly helped out the conversation a lot… yeah, that’s annoying.
Well, certainly an outlier… but this thread is resurrected on a yearly basis; and with (IMHO) good cause.
If they’ve dropped off the forum pages, then they are usually off my radar, unless I’ve made a special note to remember them for some reason–for example, that they have some good advice I’ll use for some future event.
Still, after a couple of weeks, I wouldn’t post to them unless (a) I posted in them originally with a question of some sort about the event, and (b) my later post is a follow-up. For example, if the “future event” referred to above had just happened, I’d resurrect an old thread to let everybody know how well (or poorly) the advice I received some weeks earlier worked in the context of the event.
I’d post to a thread no matter how old - don’t see why that would be any less useful than starting a new one would be. If I search SDMB and find something to add to, why not?
Or is this rude in some way that hasn’t occurred to me???
I doubt I would notice, if I could search. Then I would look something up and if I had something to add just go for it.
But since I can’t search, a few days back is the most. I like to look throught the list for items that are no longer on top that seem neglected and try to bring them up again to be helpful to the op.
It all depends, really.
I read a lot of older topics, some from many years ago. If I have something fairly important and relevant to add, I might bump up, say, a topic that’s been dead for a for two or three months. If it’s a thread I made and I want to give an update or new info was made available to me, I might extend it more to half a year. Keep in mind, though, these are only if I have something worth posting to actually contribute.
My average “okay with it” feeling of bumping up a zombie thread is probably around a month. Usually if the thread is older than 5 or 6 I’d think making a new one is the best bet.
Yesterday I considered resurrecting one that would have been over a year old, but I couldn’t find it.
It was a a Doper’s request to identify some carved wooden items he/she had inherited from an eccentric uncle’s collection (or some such) - the items were (IIRC) something like an ornate stick with a carved ring at the end - like a chunky tribal-carved bubble-blowing stick. I saw something very similar in an antiques guide, labelled ‘lime spatula’ (paraphenalia related to betel nut chewing). If I could have found the thread, and the items had never been identified while it was active, I might have posted to it.