Is Kansas that far back in the woods or is that just your personal preference for work?
I mean, if the standard repair shop in your neighborhood is still using bailing wire and clothes pins, I'd consider moving to Kansas.

Just how backwoods - we'll have to tell by what type of wood clothespins...

 

What's the big deal? Why is everybody so antinecropost? If someone posts something current and relevant to say in response to a 2 year old discussion, why discourage that?

I'm a member of lots of forums for various things; lots of forums I don't visit often. A good example is one time I posted on a machinists forum asking for drawings of an antique powered hacksaw that I own and want to restore. Nobody had them and I couldn't find them on google. I gave up on finding them and i put the project on the back burner. Recently someone dredged up that post and uploaded a scanned set that they happebed to find. I was elated; it had been over a year but the post was still very relevant.

The only thing about necroposting that sometimes irritates me, is when I see a thread that interests me, or a question I feel qualified to answer, and I read every word of every post to make sure nobody has already said what I intend to say, all the way out to page 3, and the last post is someone saying to the previous poster "you do realize that this thread is 5 years old, right?" - well I can't speak for the necroposter, but no, I sure didn't, and its because I don't pay attention to date and time stamps like I should. So really it's my fault for not paying attention.

What would help me with my inattentiveness is if all posts > 1yr old in any thread had a red (or other attention-grabbing color) background. Then it would be obvious that I'm reading from the archives and I can quickly skip to the end and see why it was dredged up and decide whether I have any meaningful input.

I do not see any reason for automatically locking posts >1yr, or even in locking threads that have been recently exhumed.

 

What's the big deal? Why is everybody so antinecropost? If someone posts something current and relevant to say in response to a 2 year old discussion, why discourage that?

.

+1.
On one forum that I am a moderator we allow posting in any thread regardless of age as long as it is still relevant to the OP or discussion in general and has something to contribute, if it is totally non relevant then it is moved to its own OP.
Max.

 

Quite a good idea, strantor.

 

How about making the text increasingly lighter in colour the older the post

 

the way I found this forum was searching for a schematic on some obsolete equipment. the thread was a few years old, but gave me some valueable info. the equipment I work on here is normally either obsolete or they will give no info on it.

Hola alfa

Would you mind telling what job is yours or at least an idea? Obsolete? Could you please elaborate?

 

actually that is my specialty, the older stuff, I am old too, I can still work on the modern surface mount and microprocessor controlled stuff, but I have experiance with the older stuff too. Sometimes I dont think I am really helping my company by keeping the older stuff running, by not upgrading to newer equipment, they may save money in the short term, but when the old stuff goes, where are the parts coming from?

 

What's the big deal? Why is everybody so antinecropost? If someone posts something current and relevant to say in response to a 2 year old discussion, why discourage that?

Probably not a big deal, and I am not sure "everybody" is strongly opposed to continuing old posts. I do see 3 reasons not to promote such practices, however. There are probably more.

1) The resurrection of an old thread is usually a hijack. Let the would be hijacker have all the honors and responsibilities attendant to having his own thread. It is always hard to know what is meant when the hijacker says, "I have the same problem," to a thread that is very long. Like after 10 pages, how is one going to know what problem the hijacker is having? Let the hijacker express his problem, question, etc. clearly in a new thread and move on from there.
2) Old posts are spam bait. Tune in early, and it is not that uncommon to see an unrelated piece of spam posted in response to an old post.
3) Such resurrected threads tend to go OT and stay there.

From my perspective #1 is the main problem, which is made worse by #3. Obviously, there are exceptions, which can include adding new and vital information, but they are uncommon, and I would leave it to the moderators' discretion of what to do.

I do not see any reason for automatically locking posts >1yr, or even in locking threads that have been recently exhumed.

I agree. Leave it to the moderators.

Finally, I do not agree that making old threads some distinguishing color or shade would help or even be desirable. I find pages have enough distractions on them as it is. One alternative is to have a message pop up in the reply screen to warn the would be poster, "You are replying to a thread that is more than 2 years old, do you want to continue?" That may already exist here, so far as I know. A similar message, e.g., This reply is to a thread that is more than 2 years old," might also be affixed to the first such reply in a resurrected thread to warn others.

John

 

then there is the dead post where someone posts a question and never comes back to check for replies, or the one where the post was just to start an arguement, repeating the same premis over and over.

 

One alternative is to have a message pop up in the reply screen to warn the would be poster, "You are replying to a thread that is more than 2 years old, do you want to continue?" That may already exist here, so far as I know. A similar message, e.g., This reply is to a thread that is more than 2 years old," might also be affixed to the first such reply in a resurrected thread to warn others.

John

Yes, that has been implemented in the past and I did consider it before posting my idea about the colored older posts. However I do not think it is 100% effective; Consider an active thread that has remained active for a great length of time, like the "Who are you?" thread started over 10 years ago by long-inactive member Battousai.

That thread would give an alert to any member who posts to it, saying "you are about to post on a 10 y/o thread."
-OR-
The clock could be reset with every new post, so that you only get the alert if YOU are the initial necroposter. In that case, (as was the case with the old VBulletin SW) anyone who posts after the initial necroposter does not see the message. So people like me who don't check timestamps still fall for the illusion of a new thread.

So in order to make that message be effective, there would need to be some convoluted criteria, like "display the message if [#_of_posts_in_last_60_days <= 5] AND [(today's_date - first_post_date) >=365] AND [days_since_viewer_has_checked_the_post = never OR >365] AND bla_bla_bla," which results in something that everybody complains about because nobody understands. AND it still wouldn't help folks like me, because I/we wouldn't get the message until the last page, right before the reply.

The colored posts would address all those issues with the simplest implementation. I do not think it would be distracting. It's already one color, just make it another. It could be a subtle red, doesn't have to be IN-YO-FACE-RED. No multicolored flashing lights needed, just a subtle red background.

 

then there is the dead post where someone posts a question and never comes back to check for replies...

That's the one that bothers me much more than someone resurrecting an old thread because

a) I simply do not understand why someone would post a message and then not come back, or post and not at least say thanks to anyone who replied

b) I may spend a small but appreciable amount of time on an answer only for it to be wasted.

The first point is the one that gets me though, the second point less so because in reality it is hardly ever a complete waste of time because I may learn something in preparing an answer, it may help others or may contribute to a debate.

I guess there is no way of addressing this issue though

 

I simply do not understand why someone would post a message and then not come back, or post and not at least say thanks to anyone who replied

Many of these 'spam' lots of forums to get a quick answer from the first to reply and ditch the rest.
Often they simply want someone to do their work for them or provide an answer to a pub argument.