Why do "modern" website producers and admins discourage posting to "old" threads?

[microSagitta]

Before the Internet was introduced to the public I maintained a BBS, in the 1980s-90s.  We had "inter-BBS" message threads and as posts were added to them we would "toss" the new messages to other member BBSs.  An example of this would be 'FIDONET'.  We would have message topics that would actually span many years and in fact message threads would very rarely be closed or deleted for any reason.  These days there seems to be some sort of taboo that makes posting to "old" threads some kind of bad thing and some administrators actually go through their message threads and lock them from further posting.  As an administrator of a BBS for decades and a website operator I simply don't understand the logic.  Information never gets old and in most cases neither do opinions.  I believe that this mindset came about because when the internet was introduced there were so many "new" administrators who didn't have a lot of experience with such things and they either found themselves overwhelmed by so many messages or some of them just thought that "old" things are for discarding or throwing away and that must pertain to all of these tons of messages.  I actually disagree with such a standard and feel that its kind of short sighted, can actually be detrimental and is contrary to the philosophy of having the internet and 'forums'. Is there an admin who could possibly explain to me just exactly why they believe that such a principal is necessary?  And if you are an admin who proscribes to this way of doing things but never really knew why you did, would you be willing to consider changing your mind.  There is information being posted on the internet today that will be relevant or at least of interest to people in a century or more.  There really is no reason, that I can think of, that it becomes necessary to discourage users from posting to "older" message threads and because they are old really isn't what I would understand to be a valid consideration.  Ultimately, of course,  it is for the person who produced and maintains the website to decide and I certainly wouldn't argue against the freedom of choice to run your site as you see fit. It is my opinion and belief that discouraging people to utilize a message thread or forum for any reason is suppressing some of the deepest philosophical reasons that we have the internet, i.e.the free exchange of ideas and information.  Thanks for taking the time to read this post and it isn't intended to be taken as a rant.  Best regards and happy trails...

[mariushm]

People are lazy, they don't search for older threads. 

Search "engines" of websites are often bad, people can't find good results, hence the lack of motivation for people to search before posting. 

Search engines like Google/Bing tend to index new stuff faster, and not bring back old threads back to search results, so new posts would show up less often in a random google / bing search. 

 

Old threads often contain outdated information, or stuff that no longer applies (ex solving a problem by doing some steps which no longer apply due to some Windows update, or some new version of a software doing things a different way)

 

Some forum software / other systems have a "hot" side where things are cached and kept in a particular database/tables and often in multiple servers, mirrored, and the older stuff often stays in separate tables/databases which may have fewer instances launched or just read only instances of the database. 

Adding new posts to old threads can cause the whole thread to be recached in memory, all the avatars of people commenting, people that may be long gone or inactive or have accounts disabled read back from secondary storage and pollute the cache causing performance loss for the website... 

If you post on such a thread, the software may have to send email notifications to all the people that posted years ago in that thread pissing them off...

 

 

Basically those BBSes and FIDO and newsgroups were mostly text, small amounts of data. People were also less "spammy", less "off topic". ...

These days you have big pictures, lots of crap added to each page, this page is probably over 100 KB of bandwidth... 

 

 

 

 

 

[minibois]

16 minutes ago, microSagitta said:

Information never gets old and in most cases neither do opinions. 

Information on its own does not get old, but the context of this information does get old.

 

If I say "CPU X is the best CPU, just look at this benchmark:" that may be true, until new products come out that beat it's performance.

Then all the conclusions and opinions in that thread need to be readjusted for said new information.

 

The reason this forum I think discourages reviving old threads is because old discussion is often just not relevant to what the new poster needs to know. Making a new thread just makes more sense, because they we'll get new answers, from currently active members applicable to their situation.

 

Of course there are threads that can be received, but those are the more 'persistent' threads, like a show off your setup or benchmark thread.

[LogicalDrm]

I'm too young for BBS era of messaging, my roots are in old phpBB forums from early 2000s, some custom made forums and then this. In all forums I've been on, reviving old threads has been frowned upon.

 

Quote

Information never gets old and in most cases neither do opinions. 

Actually, information does get outdated, and that is one of the reasons for locking old threads. Think of it this way. A topic about Win10 issues is posted in 2014, it goes through healthy discussion for days to week before dying down. Then it gets revived in 2021. Is the information presented in that thread still valid? Yes, when the talk is about that Win10 and those hardware. But its not when talking about today's Win10 or hardware.

 

Quote

Is there an admin who could possibly explain to me just exactly why they believe that such a principal is necessary?  And if you are an admin who proscribes to this way of doing things but never really knew why you did, would you be willing to consider changing your mind.  There is information being posted on the internet today that will be relevant or at least of interest to people in a century  more.  There really is no reason, that I can think of, why it is necessary to discourage any user from posting to "older" message threads; I mean can you? (and because they are old really isn't what I would understand to be a valid consideration).

We don't have any written thing for how revived/necroed threads get dealt with. Level1 forums do, and the main principles of it are similar https://forum.level1techs.com/faq

 

My logic behind it goes as follows:

• How long it has passed between last post and new post. Over 3 months in some threads is already a long time, but for some others, 6-9 months is fine.
• What does new post contain.
  • If its from original poster, its left always.
  • If its solution to problem, its left visible, but thread might be locked.
  • If its someone with same issue, and same hardware, it gets left visible and open, but only if OP has been active within few months. If they have not returned to forums in years, the poster is notified and thread locked.
  • If the poster has similar issue, but different hardware etc. new post is split off to own thread, old is locked.
  • If the post has comment that brings no new value, it gets removed and thread locked.
  • If its revived by spam, all new replies are removed and thread locked.
• For tech news posts, reviving something after couple of months is enough.

 

The issue is two-fold really. At the same time we have tons and tons of threads which have valid information for basic questions. These should be  looked, but that doesn't mean they should be revived. They could be linked, and then the information could be updated or corrected in new thread. New thread, where focus is to help another member, not the people from original thread.

 

E: Example of thread left open after a year

The reason was that issues seemed similar, and OP had been online recently. This also prompted posting their solution which can help someone else to rule out something while troubleshooting.

Edited March 17, 2021 by LogicalDrm

[Ankh Tech]

44 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

if the post has comment that brings no new value, it gets removed and thread locked.

then how is the meme thread still open??

[LogicalDrm]

Just now, Ankh Tech said:

then how is the meme thread still open??

Can you point out when the thread has been inactive for 3 months or more? 3-6 months is the cutout between threads considered current and threads considered dead. So meme thread and several other megathreads would get new content well within that timeframe. Besides that, threads in Off Topic are not looked at so intensely. Furthermore, any thread pinned is not counted to necro rulings.

[Ankh Tech]

2 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

Can you point out when the thread has been inactive for 3 months or more? 3-6 months is the cutout between threads considered current and threads considered dead. So meme thread and several other megathreads would get new content well within that timeframe. Besides that, threads in Off Topic are not looked at so intensely. Furthermore, any thread pinned is not counted to necro rulings.

I know, just kidding

[Ankh Tech]

16 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

Can you point out when the thread has been inactive for 3 months or more? 3-6 months is the cutout between threads considered current and threads considered dead. So meme thread and several other megathreads would get new content well within that timeframe. Besides that, threads in Off Topic are not looked at so intensely. Furthermore, any thread pinned is not counted to necro rulings.

oh btw, thanks to the forum for addign when we''l be able to change pur usernames

[LogicalDrm]

Just now, Ankh Tech said:

oh btw, thanks to the forum for addign when we''l be able to change pur usernames

That has been a thing for several years...

[Ankh Tech]

1 minute ago, LogicalDrm said:

That has been a thing for several years...

no,  like the exact date, I never found it

[Mark Kaine]

I think it really depends on the subject, but generally I really like reading old threads that span over several years,  and I don't think it's the majority of forums that don't encourage this,  more like maybe half of it. Not everyone is into cancel culture,  one big point of forums has always been that you can look up older information, and if necessary discuss it, ask a question etc...

For people who are offended by this something like discord might be more appropriate... good luck finding old information there...

 

 

That said specifically threads like in troubleshooting section here, if someone revives them, it's often not even related and you wonder "why"  but then again,  it doesn't offend me either,  usually I'd just suggest to make a new thread instead because that just makes a lot more sense in such a case. 

 

 

[Vishera]

An old post may contain outdated info that is no longer accurate.

[LogicalDrm]

10 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

I think it really depends on the subject, but generally I really like reading old threads that span over several years,  and I don't think it's the majority of forums that don't encourage this,  more like maybe half of it. Not everyone is into cancel culture,  one big point of forums has always been that you can look up older information, and if necessary discuss it, ask a question etc...

For people who are offended by this something like discord might be more appropriate... good luck finding old information there...

 

 

That said specifically threads like in troubleshooting section here, if someone revives them, it's often not even related and you wonder "why"  but then again,  it doesn't offend me either,  usually I'd just suggest to make a new thread instead because that just makes a lot more sense in such a case.

Fairly odd choice to bring "cancel culture" and "hate" to this discussion. Not allowing all old threads to continue is not about cancelling anyone or hating those who do it. Its mainly about keeping this tidy. Same reasons why you can just dump posts everywhere or post multiple times about same thing.

 

If we were scared about cancel culture, all old posts would be auto-locked or hidden. Thats the main gist for that trend, to dig-up controversial old posts and use them as weapon against someone you dislike.

[Mark Kaine]

6 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

Fairly odd choice to bring "cancel culture" and "hate" to this discussion.

I didn't say anything about "hate"?  That's maybe your interpretation which I can't quite understand, but that's not what I said or meant,  i said sometimes it makes sense to continue an older discussion - when it fits! (instead of "canceling" it)

 

 

8 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

all old posts would be auto-locked

That's actually something I thought of, why don't you lock threads, after say 2 months without reply?  That's not the same as removing them completely but then it simply wouldn't happen anymore that people revive years old threads, which is apparently unwanted - and often indeed makes no sense.

But,  since this is a tech website,  closing thread's after a certain amount of time isn't ideal either,  sometimes people have projects spanning a long time,  years even, good example of what I meant about liking to read old threads, it's like reading a story... that wouldn't be possible threads were just to get locked of course. 

 

 

What I'm also noticing about this subject, it seems fairly arbitrary how websites handle this, most websites have rules that you're supposed to look for threads with the same subject before making a new one,  but if you then find an older thread and post in it its "necroing" , so rules regarding that should be more clear and less contradictory in general.

 

But in my opinion, as said, it really doesn't bother me much,  if someone revives an old thread what usually happens is that people tell the poster to make a a new thread instead *or* sometimes there's new information and discussion continues,  in an *old* thread,  which is imo preferable,  but also doesn't matter much if new or old, it just sometimes makes more sense  - and this is exactly something that doesn't happen on discord for example,  you can't really revive old subjects,  and it's mostly just people posting memes and stuff,  which is fun, but not very informative! 

 

 

 

[LogicalDrm]

6 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

I didn't say anything about "hate"?  That's maybe your interpretation which I can't quite understand, but that's not what I said or meant,  i said sometimes it makes sense to continue an older discussion - when it fits! (instead of "canceling" it)

Sorry, I interpret "being offended" as "hate".

 

6 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

That's actually something I thought of, why don't you lock threads, after say 2 months without reply?  That's not the same as removing them completely but then it simply wouldn't happen anymore that people revive years old threads, which is apparently unwanted - and often indeed makes no sense.

But,  since this is a tech website,  closing thread's after a certain amount of time isn't ideal either,  sometimes people have projects spanning a long time,  years even, good example of what I meant about liking to read old threads, it's like reading a story... that wouldn't be possible threads were just to get locked of course. 

My post earlier notes on situations where reviving is accepted. And thats why it isn't done automatically. Also the issue overall is really minor.

 

6 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

What I'm also noticing about this subject, it seems fairly arbitrary how websites handle this, most websites have rules that you're supposed to look for threads with the same subject before making a new one,  but if you then find an older thread and post in it its "necroing" , so rules regarding that should be more clear and less contradictory in general.

You are summing two different things together. Looking up older threads overall is and should be part of doing research. Most likely the simple questions have been answered already. Also with active stuff, say most things related to LMG, there's already active thread most likely. So looking if something has been posted or not should be first step. Posting your own issue to 5 years old thread? Not really something we need. Again, I have outlined reasoning here.

 

The way internet forums work makes it possible overall to just continue some old discussion. In real world this type of behavior is overall frowned upon. You are supposed to reference to older stuff, but do it in a way where its clear that thing has been discussed to death and you bring it up as support for your current topic.

[Mark Kaine]

15 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

My post earlier notes on situations where reviving is accepted. And thats why it isn't done automatically. Also the issue overall is really minor.

Yeah, I agree with all of that, it makes sense in certain cases, especially since this is a tech forum mainly. 

 

19 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

You are summing two different things together. Looking up older threads overall is and should be part of doing research. Most likely the simple questions have been answered already

That's also true, I was just saying I understand why people post in old threads... they look up their issue,  find something similar and think "well, it's close enough I'll just post here"  which is really a crapshot,  sometimes it fits,  but often it doesn't... 

[wall03]

Reddit does it, sometimes it sucks (like old posts on r/homelab with useful info but not exactly what I'm looking for but if I posted my question it would be shut down as a duplicate), but sometimes it makes sense.

 

Depends.