Why are people so gung ho about not posting on old threads?

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1

Time and time again, I’ve seen people complain about “necroposting” or “zombie threads” and yet in my experience as a long time Internet user and software engineer, I have observed many useful follow-ups to threads that may not come until years later because people simply haven’t found the thread yet. When a thread is closed but an unresolved question remains, a user is forced to start a new thread, which spaghettifies the topic across multiple threads.

Understood that the main idea is not to leave a thread open lest it get overly long and unruly, but I have observed among the most liberally unmoderated forums that this rarely happens in practice; what happens more often is someone posts a relevant, helpful answer years after the original post.

The other idea is that a “zombie post” doesn’t benefit the OP as he is likely no longer concerned about the topic, but the whole point of a thread is for others who are searching online to get answers or find solutions, so even if the OP, who might have started the thread in 2003, has moved to Timbuktu, that doesn’t mean other people in 2013 can’t benefit from a post made in 2008.

:eek: revelations

2

If a thread from five years ago is excessively long, people may not want to read all that backstory just to understand the new information provided by the resurrector. Also, coming up with relevant, helpful answer years after the original post seems to be a bit of a challenge to some posters, particularly new ones. And a bunch of them seem to be directly answering questions for people who are no longer around, so it’s not that helpful.

3

It didn’t used to be so common that old threads would be dug up, but I think, something about the searchability of the database created an influx of new posts to old threads. For a little while here was some psychological reward in spotting the old thread and referencing zombies. To some segment of the current Straightdope populace, the novelty is still real. Since I myself am a zombie here, I’m not as amused as I once was. I admit, I’m still slightly amused by particularly clever zombie inferences.

4

Really, how many reanimations of zombie threads produce anything even remotely useful? Most of them are a result of somebody finding the thread via Google and tossing their $.00005 worth in, thinking this is the rest of the internet and that people give a shit what they think. Now granted, there are the occasional really good resurrections, where a new posters has brains and rational thought processes and actually thinks before they post. These people are the reason old threads aren’t locked down. We get some really good newbs this way. But the cost is a whole lot of dross.

5

It is amusing to see the percentage of banned posters in the really old threads, though…

6

Not so amusing is to see the dead ones…

7

I guess I should look at the posting dates first, but seeing BANNED under half the posters is usually the first clue for me.

I wonder how many of the posters who sign up just to comment on a old thread stick around? Almost all of them seem to be one post wonders.

8

Moved to ATMB.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

9

In response to the OP:

Our current policy, in General Questions and several other forums, is to leave “zombie” threads open if new information has been contributed in the post that resurrected them (or sometimes in subsequent posts). If the new post was pointless and contributed no new information, we close them. Also if the original thread was problematic for some, such as having been started by a troll, or being very contentious, we may close it.

This said, most zombies are resurrected by drive-by posters who contribute little new information or remain to participate in the thread.

Other forums, such as MPSIMS, threads are more in the nature of conversations. It’s generally better to start a fresh conversation on a subject than to resurrecting an old one in which many of the original posters are no longer participating.

10

Sometimes threads are started to ask a specific question or request specific information. It seems stupid to answer questions posted months or years before. And sometimes the person who started the thread doesn’t even post here anymore, making replies even more pointless. I’ve seen people respond to 5 year old “need answer fast” posts :D.
“thank you for the advice on our newborn. FYI he’s entering his second year of college now”

11

As a sometime admin elsewhere, I’ve always very strongly preferred that an existing thread be added to, rather than have a plethora of duplicated threads rehashing the same old arguments.

12

THOSE are the posts that piss me off the most WRT zombies.

13

Yet you never seem to close these resurrected threads.

14

Yeah! Just check out this list of zombie threads Colibri neglected to close:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=16055782&postcount=14

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=16031140&postcount=16

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=16030947&postcount=10

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=15943181&postcount=29

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=15930946&postcount=27

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=15928376&postcount=17

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=15918736&postcount=19

And that’s just from this year! It’s almost as if one would have to be a retard to not see the truth - that Colibri never closes zombie threads!

15

Makes sense to me. I have no problem with zombies, but I do sometimes get irritated when the same question that I know has been asked and answered several times here before (sometimes answered by me) gets asked all over again. It gets tedious to keep on correcting the same old misapprehensions.

16

Starfleet forbids it.

17

Not that this is notably different from current threads.

18

It sort of is. The longer a thread exists, the greater chance someone will stumble across it in a google search.

If someone stumbles in and starts posting pointless nonsense in an active thread, the currently-active participants will usually deal with it - in the case of a zombie, not so much.

Another part of the problem, as far as I can see, is that we’re quite unaccustomed to threads being resurrected and so it’s really common for people to mistakenly start responding to the old posts - responding to people who may have since changed their minds, or may have left the SDMB, or died - and it all gets sort of awkward.

19

This is true. :smiley:

20

Why do people get so aggravated? Two examples:

(1) Imagine I read a 3-page thread about an intense personal problem (such as often appear in MPSIMS), like say, “Should I dump my boyfriend?” My mind is arguing with people, agreeing with people, thinking of my response and wonderful advice and sharing experiences. And then, I discover that the thread is four years old, except for one new post yesterday. That’s annoying, and somewhat frustrating. I’ve not only wasted my time, I’ve got worked up /involved/ empathetic about a dead issue. I don’t need to post anything at all, my post would be irrelevant. The topic is obsolete because it’s about a specific person’s situation.

(2) Imagine I read a 3-page thread about why math is such a male-dominated field. My mind is arguing with people, agreeing with people, thinking of my response and wonderful insights. And then, I discover that the thread is four years old, except for one new post yesterday. That’s slightly annoying, but the topic is still relevant and current, so I don’t feel frustrated. I can still post my thoughts, and don’t feel that it’s a wasste of time or a dead issue.

That’s the situation, IMHO, in a nutshell. Reanimation of some threads does not produce anything useful, true enough. But reanimation of other ancient threads CAN produce useful information. For example, in Cafe Society, a thread about “What’s your favorite movie with horses?” – if someone comes to post after a three year hiatus, it’s fine and doesn’t matter. A thread about, “Who do you think will win the Oscars?” from 2007… well, that’s pretty much one that we’d close if it got resurrected in December 2013, for instance. (Presumably, someone reading that one would catch on that it was a meaningless revival long before page 2.)

So, like so much here, it all depends on the specific topic and whether the revival is interesting or simply annoying. This TENDS to vary by forum, MPSIMS tends to have much more individual situations, very specific, that become irrelevant after some time lapse. Comments on Cecil’s Columns tends to have many more discussions that are still relevant.