Fuckin’ A!
I used to go to college with a guy who’d respond to that comment with
Last I heard, he’d dropped out of school.
I was thinking the exact same thing. A friend of mine had that same reply. Once when she said that and her brother happened to be nearby, they started working their way up the alphabet. I don’t think they made it far, but it was clearly a game/joke they had done growing up.
Edit: I knew I told that story already.
I thought they were sayin’ “Fuckin’ AI”
Took me a minute to figure out the I was a !
Funny thing, I was agreeable.
To be clear, a minor annoyance. You’re well liked here
You’re doing it all wrong. Here’s the classy way to do it:
I have never understood the hostility about zombies. I just do not see the problem if there is new information. I don’t always pick up on it right away either, but the date is right there on every post.
The part I bolded is the problem.
Not all bumps are created equal. The downside to bumping a thread with something tangential to the original topic is that, as a newcomer to the thread, I now have a bunch of old posts to read to understand the context. And it’s frustrating when I read through it all and realize the context was completely unimportant to the new post, and I just wasted my time.
Good bump: here’s an update on this old incident, or here’s an answer that no one came up with originally, etc.
Bad bump: this old case reminds of something different I read about today, or this person we discussed 10 years ago is now in the news for something new; etc.
Basically, does someone need to read all the old posts to understand the new post? Then bump away. But if all you’re doing is referencing the general topic, then link to it and don’t make people read all the history.
If it’s updating a story with new information, it’s probably better to zombify. If it’s something like What’s Your Favorite Comfort Food, just make a new one.
And if you’re performing necromancy to argue with someone who hasn’t been on the forums in literal decades, or to dump a turd of misinformation in a topic which was correctly and adequately answered years ago… just don’t.
Those resurrections seem to nearly always be done by drive-by, one-and-done posters, who generally speaking seem to have no idea that they’re replying to a 20-year-old thread.
Does anyone actually feel obliged to “read all the history” in a very long thread that they haven’t been following? They can feel free to read as much or as little as they like, or read the OP and skip to the end and read the last dozen posts.
Why? That kind of thread is a perfect example of when adding to an existing thread makes sense, because it contains a lot of standalone unconnected posts or short conversations. Adding yet another “favourite comfort food” item to it is harmless and keeps everything in one place. Needlessly spawning new threads is just poor practice, IMHO.
There nothing I hate more than posters spawning three or four or half a dozen threads on topics that are so similar that they’re basically the same topic. So if I remember reading a post somewhere and decide to reply to it later, I never know what the hell thread it was in among the proliferation of essentially identical threads! Sometimes that happens when someone just doesn’t notice that there’s already a similar or identical existing thread, and I’m always grateful when a mod takes the trouble to merge them.
I meant more if the last post was over two years ago.
I don’t. I read the OP, see that it’s old, and jump to recent posts. Unless i find the old posts fascinating, which sometimes happens.
I wasn’t here when a lot of those were written, and often enjoy them. Disclosure: as a new mod and relatively new poster, i lobbied against the “kill zombies” rule. I found it really made me feel unwanted when i found an old thread interesting, wanted to reply, and then the thread was closed with a nasty note about it being a “zombie”. I think it’s hostile to newcomers to do that.
I have no strong feelings as to whether “what’s your favorite comfort food” be reopened, or a new thread started. I think I’d prefer a link to the old one in that case. Tastes may have changed, and I’m probably not interested in the comfort food of posters active today whom i know someone about than those of long-gone posters. But I’m also not going to read all those old posts, so it doesn’t affect me a lot either way.
I love love love all the food threads.
I especially like reading them when I’m having a rage food fetish, I can’t satisfy.
I don’t care you eat marshmallows and pancake syrup for breakfast, knowing I can’t eat that. But I sure like you can. And I like reading it, I don’t care the date of the thread.
I can’t say I ever opened a food zombie to post, but I do read them.
There’s a “comfort food” thread that was started in September 2000, another in March 2002, and yet another just last June, all of them still open. I have no strong feelings either way about starting a new thread on the exact same topic if an existing one is really old, but I really don’t see what useful purpose it serves. Those three threads are essentially identical, with just slight variations on the title.
The only thing that comes to mind is that it’s pretty much pointless to reply to any of the really old posts because most of those posters are no longer with us or have long forgotten about their post. But one can still quote them and comment on them, which has some value.
Aw, thanks!
Yes, but that’s me. I don’t speak for anyone else. Perhaps one reason is that I have a personal peeve when in a reasonably long thread, someone comes up and posts the exact same thing that was done 200 posts previously, and again 100 posts prior. And finally, the third time, especially if it begins “I haven’t read the whole thread but thought XYZ is important”. Which is fine, it probably is/was, but boy does it chap my hide.
And don’t get me started if the same thing happens but it’s only a few hours / dozen posts apart.
I’m weak. I know.
I agree with you. Someone who hasn’t even read the preceding two or three posts and posts exactly the same thing that someone just said five minutes ago bugs the hell out of me, especially if the previous post was made by me and the new poster obviously didn’t even bother to read it!
But based on a policy that old threads beyond a certain age have no value and we should start new ones instead of reviving a lengthy old zombie, is it any less frustrating if someone posts the exact same thing that was previously posted in said zombie? The only difference is, in one case you can get mad at a poster who didn’t read all the posts in a lengthy current thread, and in the other case you can get mad at the OP who started a new thread when there was already an existing one!
You’re not weak; you’re particular. Me too.
Because of the way I process the Dope, I all but never come upon an existing long thread. I’ve either been reading & commenting in that thread since the beginning, or I never see the thread again after having dismissed it as uninteresting to me from when the OP was new.
We have a few posters who love to respond to threads of any length having read only the OP title, not a word of the OP body. And certainly nothing of anyone else’s posts. Those folks are vandals; vandals by ignorance and indifference rather than vandals by malice, but vandals nevertheless. A pox upon their houses.
We have another few posters who love to respond to threads of any length having read the OP title and OP body, but none of the existing replies, be there 10 or 1000. And then make the most obvious observations imaginable. Virtually guaranteeing they’re simply repeating what’s already been said a few times before.
IMO both these groups are posting to hear themselves type, not with the intent of providing any value to anyone else, including the OP they’re ostensibly replying directly to in their imagined one-on-one convo.