Strangest thing-I posted yesterday in a thread about the Gifted school programs.
Noticed today it was locked because-GASP!-it was an old thread.
And it was-way old.
But if it’s a harmless subject, and 10 people have come along and posted merrily, why does it matter?
What’s the time frame on this? Can we post in something that’s been dead a day? A week?
as I understand it, the rule used to be three months - but after seeing a thread locked that was not bumped but only linked to I don’t think we are allowed to link to old threads, either.
On the contrary, linking is permitted and encouraged, digging up oldies isn’t.
Why, though, I wonder?
Moving this thread from IMHO to About This Message Board.
Whoop, my bad - I read the “old” thread four or five times, looking for the “new” post and didn’t find it - found it jujst now.
There are different rules in different forums. It’s OK in the Comments forums, in Cafe Society and General Questions (within reason).
The primary reason is that membership changes over time. You read an old thread from a year ago, and you respond to (say) Alexander’s post… only, Alexander is no longer posting here and so can’t respond. If the thread is a year old Comment on Cecil’s Column about Napoleon’s penis, then resurrecting a year-old thread is probably not an issue. But if the thread is in the Pit, and you’re responding with hostility to tear someone apart… well, if that person is no longer posting, then you’re beating a dead horse/attacking a person who can’t defend themselves. That’s considered poor form.
There’s also the question of dragging up dead issues. Alexander posted, eight months back, that he was thinking of marrying his girlfriend but having qualms, and people responded. Now, eight months later, you drag up that thread to make a comment. Alexander might have already married the woman, or might have decided not to, or she might have run off to join a circus sideshow and broken Alexander’s heart. Basically, let the dead past stay dead.
Ah!
Makes total sense now.
Thanks!
Thanks for the rationale behind it. I was wondering, too. If you don’t want old threads to be revived, is it possible for you to make all threads of a certain age and older, read-only? I have no knowledge of how a server for a message board works. But I will imagine that all posts for each forum must reside in a folder, right? Could you not highlight dozens or hundreds of columns of posts, click on Properties and check the Read-Only box? Or is there a batch process that would close x number of threads?
This has been asked before, and apparently locking threads is a manual, one at a time, procedure. That makes it a lot of added work for our already overworked mods. Perhaps we could induce them to do it by funding twice-yearly all expenses paid, thread-locking junkets in the Bahamas?
I’ve seen plenty of old threads linked to without incident; maybe someone locked the thread as a pre-emptive strike against a bump? I’m pretty sure the rules say that if it’s an old thread, you should create a new one, and if desired, include a link to the old one. (IMHO, if you are linking to an old thread, it’s a good idea to let people know that it’s an old thread, and shouldn’t be bumped.)
It’d be a lot of trouble to go to to lock thousands and thousands of threads just to prevent two or three from being bumped in five years.
Actually, I’m pretty sure there is a vB hack (i.e., a script modification, not the bad kind of hack) available to licensed vB owners that automatically closes threads that are XX days/years/months old. Jerry and the admins probably already know about this, but I thought I’d mention it.
It’s somewhat irrelevent, though, because IIRC, the SDMB’s tech folks have been understandably loath to implement too many modifications to the vB program, since it can make upgrading to new versions later on more onerous. (Mainly 'cause the modifications may have to be added from scratch. That’s not always the case, but it is probable.)