some what odd thread necromancy by single digit posters

[TerraDave]

again, I don't know.

The low, low post count is what sticks out.

Here is another one:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?5810-Hercules-in-Deities-and-Demigods/page20

 

[darjr]

Could it be some one or group trying to punk ENWorld? Is there a trend in the type of threads, other than their age?

 

[Umbran]

There doesn't seem to be much punk to it. The couple of such threads I looked at had perfectly reasonable posts. It just looks like they posted to a thread not realizing how old the thread was.

 

[Alzrius]

aren't aware of the insane fear of necroposts that grips some forumites.

I've seen that before, and I've never understood it. All the more odd is that it's often exhibited by the same people who are quick to say "we're already had a thread on this" when someone starts a new thread on a topic that's been discussed before.

It's almost like they think that a particular topic, once it peters out, is "supposed" to be closed forever; a new thread on a previously-discussed should be ignored in favor of referencing the older one, but said older one should only be reviewed rather than revived.

That's patently absurd, of course, since new posters who hadn't joined before or missed the thread the first time around might just notice the topic now and want to discuss it. For that matter, some of the older posters might want to offer a new thought or insight. That's to say nothing of the fact that a policy of discouraging discussion tends to be anathema to the whole point of having a forum in the first place.

 

[Morrus]

Could it be some one or group trying to punk ENWorld? Is there a trend in the type of threads, other than their age?

Pretty weak sauce if so! There's no harm to it, I guess.

 

[Morrus]

I've seen that before, and I've never understood it. All the more odd is that it's often exhibited by the same people who are quick to say "we're already had a thread on this" when someone starts a new thread on a topic that's been discussed before.

It's almost like they think that a particular topic, once it peters out, is "supposed" to be closed forever; a new thread on a previously-discussed should be ignored in favor of referencing the older one, but said older one should only be reviewed rather than revived.

That's patently absurd, of course, since new posters who hadn't joined before or missed the thread the first time around might just notice the topic now and want to discuss it. For that matter, some of the older posters might want to offer a new thought or insight. That's to say nothing of the fact that a policy of discouraging discussion tends to be anathema to the whole point of having a forum in the first place.

The logic is that threads where everyone has long since moved on will not be active. And lots of dead threads make people go away. It is more productive to start a new thread.

 

[Alzrius]

The logic is that threads where everyone has long since moved on will not be active. And lots of dead threads make people go away. It is more productive to start a new thread.

I can understand that, but as I mentioned, I've also seen a lot of people - sometimes the same ones who complain about thread necros - rolling their eyes when the same topic is the subject of multiple threads, muttering some variant of "we've talked about this before."

EDIT: That's leaving aside the fact that most of the necromancy'd threads that I've seen tend to have, at the very least, a brief spike in activity, rather than languishing after one or two new posts. After a few years, most of the eyes that fall on a reactivated old thread are new, and treat the topic like any other.

 

[Morrus]

I can understand that, but as I mentioned, I've also seen a lot of people - sometimes the same ones who complain about thread necros - rolling their eyes when the same topic is the subject of multiple threads, muttering some variant of "we've talked about this before."

Yeah, that's a different thing and it's just rude. Nobody gets to declare that because they had a conversation about something, nobody else is allowed to.

 

[darjr]

I kinda like the old threads that generate new traffic.

 

[Deset Gled]

I've seen that before, and I've never understood it.

I actually think thread necromancy is worse for D+D boards than many other scenarios, mainly when it comes to rules discussions. The problem is that the rules change over time. Its very easy to pull up a thread from a wrong edition, or from before an errata was issued, or before the appropriate splat book was published. I've seen threads that were originally about 3.0 (when it was only 3e) necroed by someone thinking it was 3.5. The problem can be even worse with the large amount of errata in 4e.

For information reference, a dead thread is kind of like a 15 year old encyclopedia; still full of info and interesting to read for historical purposes, but not something that should be actively used.

That being said, thread necromancy can actually be really neat when everyone posting in it is aware of the necro status. The problem is that a lot of necro threads are unearthed by people that have no idea they're doing it. I think it might help if there was a way to identify threads that were started a certain time ago (like, a year or more), but I don't think there's an easy way to do this in the board software.