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[Kuildeous]

Just curious if there really is forum etiquette against posting in an old thread. I refer to a post on a different forum:
http://www.ratforum.com/showthread.php?282746-Closed-thread&p=1936978&viewfull=1#post1936978

I don't think you need to register to view that. If you do, I can post the contents. In short, a topic was closed by the forum admin because it was inactive for a while but someone else found the thread useful and poste their appreciation.

It seems to me to be unnecessarily draconic. So what if an old thread makes a comeback? Obviously somebody found the topic interesting.

Is this common among other forums?

[Burning Skull]

Necroing good old threads is cool.
It's like you buy, say, a Snickers, chew on it a bit and go for vacation. Then one day you return and to your surprise you see that your precious snack is still where you left it and you finish it happily.

[Awaclus]

I guess the (sometimes unwritten) rule against necroing threads exists because oftentimes, old threads are no longer relevant. If the thread is still relevant, it shouldn't be a problem, but it's pretty common for forums to have rules that are strictly enforced even when it makes no sense.

[popsofctown]

So, here's this thing.  Moderating a forum is a job.  But it's like, this job that no one pays you for.  It's even a job that no one thanks you for.  Why would you do something like that?  And like, you're in charge of people.  But they don't actually respect you any more than they respect furniture.  Even though you're technically in charge.

Forums have a few rules.  Most of them are super reasonable, and rarely broken, without need to ever have been read, just obeyed as a consequence of incidentally being a decent human being.

But man, like, you got this job.  And all the, powah, man.  You need to flex the powah.  Maybe there should be more rules, or implied rules? I mean, you have a job.  There's gotta be a reason you took this job.  You are like, so exalted. 

Merely enforcing the rules as they exist and identifying a few clear issues where your users are clearly being disturbed by behavior that isn't covered by the rules is one way you could approach your job, but man, that's the way normal people think.  You're not normal, man.  You moderate a forum.  You moderate this place that anyone in the world can post.  Or not post, if you don't let them.  Really when you think about it, you're a bigger deal than the chief executive of any particular country.  Definitely a bigger deal than your older brother.  He was just class president and prom king.  Who cares about that.

You gotta go beyond the call of duty.  You gotta clean the garbage your users don't really understand is garbage.  It's cool, you understand why they aren't enlightened enough to be upset yet.  It's not like they are forum moderators.  They just show up here.  You live here. 

Any behavior that isn't quite ideal, remove it.  Some post isn't so narrowly ontopic that you could type it into google and find your forum? Obliterate it.  Some user posted content that is in the bottom half of the quality of all content on your forum? If you keep nipping and tucking, both halves will be the best half.    Someone made a post questioning your hyper vigilance moderating the forum?: It's not clear whether you will mark it as spam or flaming, but that anarchist has made one thing clear:

IT'S TIME FOR A POWER TRIP!!!!!!

[Burning Skull]

...

[GendoIkari]

In general necroing a thread should be done cautiously, and I've seen forums where there's either rules or guidelines against it. Even on this forum, you will get a warning before you post in an old thread. I think the reason is that old threads being on the front page can cause confusion. For example, yesterday I necrod a thread from several years ago, which was a list of cards that have unique abilities. If someone isn't paying close attention, they could see that thread and think that it's new, and then they could respond and point out that the OP is wrong about a lot of stuff, because of stuff that's in Guilds and Adventures.

[theory]

Post in new thread: USE SEARCH FUNCTION NOOB
Post in old thread: DON'T NECRO OLD THREADS NOOB

I don't see what's wrong w/ posting in old threads unless you're introducing a bunch of irrelevant discussion.

[Polk5440]

Post in new thread: USE SEARCH FUNCTION NOOB

I would if the search function was even half-way decent.

[Cuzz]

Post in new thread: USE SEARCH FUNCTION NOOB

I would if the search function was even half-way decent.

The search function is fine, why do people even complain about the search function? They can't all be the best function ever.

[SCSN]

Just curious if there really is forum etiquette against posting in an old thread. I refer to a post on a different forum:
http://www.ratforum.com/showthread.php?282746-Closed-thread&p=1936978&viewfull=1#post1936978

An entire forum dedicated to a single Dominion card? I thought we were the fanatically obsessed...

[Donald X.]

Is this common among other forums?

It ranges from, you aren't even affecting anything because threads aren't sorted by last post date, to, they ban you for it. You want to find out what a particular site's policy is before doing it. I think anti-necroing policies come from, sometimes a new user is a kid who just posts in 20 long-dead threads and they fill your screen.

There was this one night on some long-dead forums. There was a new user on who was obviously a familiar banned user who would have his new account banned in the morning. And I said, he should introduce himself properly. When someone was posting and we didn't know much about them, we called that "necro-ing" - they were the walking dead. So he should immediately go say a few words about himself in the Necroing Has Got to Stop thread. He of course was not possibly going to be fooled (although he was getting banned anyway, for ban evasion). But someone else read that post and, perhaps a bit drunk, went and talked about himself in that (ancient) thread. He then deleted some of it, saying "phew, I was almost serious on the internet." Then in the morning they banned him for necro-ing the thread. I always found that very poignant.

[GendoIkari]

On another forum I was on, one guy decided to troll another specific user by going through his posting history an necroing all the threads this other user had started. The result was that the forum looked like this other user had spammed the forum with a bunch of threads.

[LastFootnote]

It ranges from, you aren't even affecting anything because threads aren't sorted by last post date, to, they ban you for it. You want to find out what a particular site's policy is before doing it.

Naw, man. Any forum that would ban me for posting pertinent discussion in a thread just because its old is not a forum I want to be a part of.

I'm especially glad that you can necro threads on f.DS, where a user might want to look up discussion on e.g. Contraband and it's way easier to have it all in one or two spots then to have to read 10 different threads on the subject.