Suggestion to avoid necro-bumping | Site Feedback

evildictaitor
if( !succeed( try() ) ) { while(true) try(); }

Would it be possible for a BIG warning sign to be displayed when you try to reply to any thread for which the last reply was over a year ago, and another warning sign if you're trying to reply to root or a comment that is over a year old? It's not an immediate problem, but I've noticed that every now and then someone new will try and post a helpful comment to someone who went away in 2005/6/7 and then there's a sudden influx of help from various niners who fail to see that the post's "owner" is no longer here...

Sound like a good idea to you?

HumanCompiler
Compiling humans...and code

Yup, good idea. I believe it's been brought up before. That said, it's not very high priority since it's more of an annoyance than a real problem.

Duncanma
Just Coding for Fun...

I was musing around the idea of a special 'necro-bumper' achievement or for 'raising the thread' Smiley

But yeah, good idea. We could have a setting to block replies a certain # of days after the last reply, or at least to warn them

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

In reply to Duncanma

#Oct 17th, 2008 @ 8:34 PM

Blocking would be bad, because there are on occasion good reasons to resurrect a thread.

The biggest annoyance for me is not even the thread-resurrection itself (even if a lot of them are pointless), it's that after that has happened a lot of people will start replying to older posts in the thread as if they're still currently relevant. That happens because the thread appears new (it's on the first page) and not everybody spends time reading the post date of individual posts.

With the current system of replying to a specific post, I think it would be feasible to put up a warning if the actual post you are replying to (regardless of the date on the last post of the thread, which may be current) is over a couple of months old. You might also consider putting up a (smaller, less intrusive) warning if the root post of the thread is old, regardless of the post you are replying to (because you might be replying to a new post that needlessly dragged up an old topic).

But don't block it entirely.

HumanCompiler
Compiling humans...and code

In reply to Sven Groot

#Oct 17th, 2008 @ 11:59 PM

I like that better.

It lines up with some other thoughts we've had on showing messages in the reply area while you're creating new posts (like "Hey, someone's posted to this thread since you started writing your reply. Click the refresh button to see the new comments", etc). Just thoughts at this point though.