Necroposts

I've been seeing a lot of necroposts lately. My question is... is this a broken feature of the forum? I can only see back to mid-october using any means possible. Not counting the old archived posts either. What's going on here? Weren't we supposed to get a new forum last month?

I'm familiar with the term 'necro-bumping'---used pejoratively to criticize bringing back old threads.

But I may be failing to understand your term 'necropost'....??

It's the same thing

The politically correct term is "thread recycling." We're striving for a greener forum, apparently??

Someone probably runs a search, sees a thread that was posted on the exact topic they were looking for and doesn't bother checking the dates. Either that or they were bored and decided to necro-rez a post to watch it stagger in mock life through the pages again...

The only trouble I see with the practice is finding your place in the thread when it gets too long. It's more natural for it to be like a brief conversation, albeit a slow one, than having to read through 13 thousand posts - as in the thread that shall remain nameless that I have ignored but refuses to die.

The key to that one is to just jump in whenever. I haven't read all of them, I cam in somwhere and just backread a couple of pages. If I go away, and don't come to the forums for a few days, i don't read everything that went on. I read 2 or 3 pages and pick up from there.You'd go crazy trying to read it all.

User CP, Edit Options, Thread Display Options, Default Thread Age Cutoff.

I leave mine set to Show All Threads.

When we use the forum Search we appear to be limited to 200 results, if memory serves, which doesn't begin to be enough to do proper research. It's very disappointing not being to able to do a proper search. Can't search the history of SL. It sucks. Plus they removed the pictorial history of attached images, and completely destroyed the original scripting forum with posts from Catherine Omega, Christopher Omega, and hilarious posts from Wednesday Grimm.

I'll get back to you in six months.

Another perspective is that, say, one does the internetiquette requisite search, finds the appropriate thread, but has a question. What to do? Start a new thread -- wherein some oldbie will archly take one to task for not searching (usually without even LOOKING at the question, or considering that the threads that they usually provide links for might not have the final word on the topic at hand) -- OR, necropost, which gets whines even if some new angle might actually be under examination. Date-checking doesn't help: content-checking does.

Personally, I've never seen the problem with resurrecting an old thread (here or on any forum) if some new bit can be added or asked. I don't get the whining about it at all. Can someone explain that?

It probably comes from the fact that a lot of discussion threads just end up being arguments. So posting to an old thread can be seen as dragging up a stupid argument that regular posters were glad to see finally end.

Very few people will moan about an informative thread being resurrected.

Is there somethng wrong with old threads?
Or should they be locked forever out of sight, like an elderly parent put in a retirement home?

Be careful here, we all get elderly and we don't know what state we will be in!

Usually Florida.

I want to build a retirement, assisted living center for the space age wiz kid generation. Highspeed internet gaming, LAN parties, Grey Legion guild on the MMORPGs. Bingo night, my eye; we will have PvP raiding nights.

Count me in - but can we retire now?

There was a time people were jumped on if they had a question and started a new thread. "Do a search, moron!" the people jumping on the thread starters would scream.

Now people are searching and adding to discussions, somewhat like people used to scream about before. Now people are pulling their hair out and erupting in rage that people with certain questions are searching, finding topics they wish to talk about, talk about it in that thread, instead of, you know, creating a new thread.

Do one, or the other, and you are a stupid noob, eh? heh.

See, here, if I had read further, I'd have seen that my thought was already expressed in this thread. Oops.

I just felt like searching for a really old post to reference:


"Why necro-posting is bad..."

http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=74763&highlight=necropost

That's a good link there Littleme and it pretty much covers my beef about necroposts. I really don't like it when it looks like I'm just re-reading all of our old posts over and over again. Attitudes and information changes over time and a lot of the stuff that comes up in necroposts are just out of date. I'm pretty sure if we had mods again those things would get closed out.

Necroposting only bothers me when someone sees fit to add something that is clearly unnecessary for one reason or another. Examples:

- the Desperate To Appear Knowledgeable And Helpful person who, 5 months after a question has been asked and answered and thanks given all around, posts a suggestion of something else to try. Probably something completely wrong.

- the Feels Entitled To Personal Service In Every Situation person, who demands to know why the free script posted in the scripting forum in 2005 doesn't work or otherwise fit his/her needs, when half the functions in the script have been deprecated and the generous scripter is now busy working toward his new Level 80 Mage in WoW.

- the Belated Know-It-All, who tries to pick a fight with the OP regarding the particulars of maximum flying and building altitude while managing to miss the fact that these limits may have been different back when there was only one continent and point-to-point teleporting was only a gleam in some Linden's eyes.

etc...

Sometimes, when you have debated something for a while and then gone away, you come back to find that someone else has tried to have the last word in your absence. This can't be tolerated.

Other times you might find a topic that you missed, but that gets your dander up. As readers of the Daily Mail will know, in retrospect everything is an outrage.

And the OP has already moved on to City of Heroes, trying to get his lvl 15 Kheldian Warshade up to lvl 20 and wondering why it's taking so long. Which gives us elders something to do, since at least one of us is going to smack down the whipper-snapper and tell him/her to get offa our lawn.