Actually, the thread I started this train wreck about was 5 years old.
If the moderators and admins running the board don’t want people replying to threads that are more than, say, three months old, why don’t they just run a script every once in a while locking all the threads older than three months? Then they don’t have to worry about anyone reviving them, accidentally or not.
Simple, easy… common sense even…
Our tech support people prefer that we do NOT tamper with the basic software. I don’t know if a script such as you’re talking about would fall under those guidelines or not.
The admins on this message board are not necessarily techies. I"m not, and C. K. Dexter Haven isn’t. We have other duties which require that we have access to the admin control panel, though.
Plus, as I understand it, an active thread that has been open for three months is welcome to remain open, provided it remains active. The Diablo 2 thread comes to mind…
This makes some sense to me. I know that if you ask something in GQ which was asked before, someone will often say or imply that you should have searched first. But in that case, you wouldn’t be reviving a thread, just rereading it.
But starting new threads when there are perfectly good (albeit old) ones open doesn’t seem so bad. Unless the old one is long (say, more than a page or two) in which case you might as well just start over. That’s just my opinion…
<< I thought he was maybe early 30s if not late 20s. >>
No, we didn’t start the Straight Dope Message Board until the late 90s. There weren’t enough home computers nor internet traffic back in the late 20s and early 30s.
On the question of reviving old threads vs starting new ones: different forums have different levels of tolerance, based partly on how much the content becomes dated, and partly upon the inability of people to respond. Comments on Cecil’s Comments, for instance, is more accepting of pulling up older columns than is Great Debates, for obvious reasons.
sigh I apologized for starting this mess before… can’t we just stop this thread? I started it, mistakenly, I was totally fished in. I was wrong! I am a piece of shit! Please… can’t one of the mods (or one of the admins 
wtf did I do to get admins involved???) I am fucking sorry! I won’t post for a month if you want. Or ever. You can ban me! Whatever! Can’t SOMEBODY just put an END to this thread?
If you’re really lucky, maybe someone will bump it five years from now . . .
And on that note, I bring this thread to a close.