It’s not just “making new posters feel like second-class citizens,” it’s putting up a serious barrier to new posters joining at all. Many new posters come here because they’ve seen an old column, and searched for the thread about it. Or some topic has attracted them via a google-search (or equivalent.) Basically: they’re coming here because they want to post about a specific topic. It would be daunting to get an error message – “No, sorry, but you can’t post on that topic until you’ve posted on three more current topics.” Most of them will shrug shoulders and not post at all.
So, basically, we think that given the choice between discouraging new posters, and having old posters put up with the occasional zombie… well, we know which direction we prefer. It’s only a minor inconvenience* to find some age-old thread has been resurrected. It would be a major inconvenience if we started turning away new posters.
- Yes, I do understand the annoyance, I’ve fallen for it myself.