Is it weird? Is it rude? Should threads be archived?
Perfectly fine. Bumps don’t do what they used to do in messageboard/BBS contexts, so if you have something useful/clever/funny to say in a dead thread I say go for it.
Heck, sometimes it can prompt a follow-up when someone says “You know, I should do [x related to topic]” after some time has passed, which is fun.
I have had threads on reddit that were well over 5 years old get comments. I’m not upset, but I am questioning how you ended up so deep in the past + what the hell past me was thinking.
Me posting in a thread that was last active in 2005:
Thread necromancer should be a Halloween costume
We had the opportunity to do something really funny, here
You still can if you come back in 5 years
The wording had initially confused me.
I thought this was about posts that got no comments, not about necro’ing posts.
Honestly, I think necro’ing posts is really only a problem when your forum software doesn’t have many options for sorting the feed. Lemmy is more advanced; if you don’t like necro’d posts, then just don’t sort by recent activity.
Not if we keep this thread alive.
In memory of the lost ones: *Bump
If I come across a post and I have something significant enough to comment, I leave it regardless of age. But I don’t think I’m ever going to see anything more than a few days old with how I browse.
I acknowledge it. I preface my post with something, usually /rezz or I’ll comment “I know this is old but…”
In my experience people primarily get annoyed at thread necro when it’s to ask/discuss something tangential to the initial thread. Just start a new one in that case, instead of potentially bumping notifications to several people for your barely-related issue/discussion.
OTOH if it’s relevant info for a long dead thread then by all means add it or ask your query, that info could be valuable to someone with the same issue or it could be a pertinent update to an old discussion with new info.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with necroing a thread though. Automated archiving of threads is mostly counter-productive. Like when I find a closed and locked thread on GitHub that I have a fix for I just go “oh well guess they can find the fix themselves”.
I don’t care, I post when I have something to say.
The older the thread the funnier necroing is. If the forums I was on in middle school were still around you can bet I’d be bumping some of those threads just for teh lulz.
I never understood the taboo.
It’s a holdover from old BBS forum style.
When you reply to an ancient thread, it immediately gets pushed to the top of the board. Now everyone basically is wondering what this 5 year old topic is doing on the first page. And they might have to read through several pages of messages to understand what the hell the newest reply is about because nobody remembers the topic in the first place.
With Reddit/Lemmy, the upvote system means it really doesn’t matter at all if you reply to an ancient thread, it won’t jump to the front page for anyone.
Ah yes, that would have been annoying. I started in the era of small web forums where activity was split out from recency by page or dialog.
yes it will for those who (like me) are sorting by “new comments”
But you know what you’re getting into, then, so it’s not confusing or a problem.
Me neither, but someone commented here it’s a holdover from the days of forums where a new reply to an old thread would instantly put that thread at the top of the forums because the order was always latest reply. This was found annoying by some people especially if the new reply was short and meaningless or something. Makes more sense to me now.
If it’s a question that has no answer (or no useful answer) it’s totally fine to comment with an answer.
I figure that someone will eventually stumble across the same thread that I did if they have a similar question. Might as well contribute and share some knowledge.
My favorite was a specific problem I had modding Morrowind on Linux years ago and posting to reddit.
Only for years to pass and I search for the same problem, only to find my own damn post with no replies.
I don’t understand why people would find it rude/incorrect
God knows there aren’t many new threads on lemmy so I’ve been searching random keywords looking for interesting old threads to read and sometimes comment on.
Quite a few of us sort by “New Comments”. Posting to an old thread can help breathe new life into it, especially if you have something new to add to the conversation.
I’d never seen that feature. I’m gonna try it out now
Depends on the type of community, forums it’s potentially disruptive since it bumps it to the top. Redsit/Lemmy style it matters less.
I certainly would advocate against archiving Lemmy posts in a way that “locks” them, I can’t tell you how many times an old reddit post shows up in a search result and helpful newer replies with the most recent information is still getting added sporadically.
I love notifications about replies to the old stuff as it means that the internet has slowed down and new and shining isn’t as appealing as old stuff.
I do too! I mean notifications of replies are always a shot of dopamine no matter how old.
That reminds me there’s this dude who replied to a pic I posted with “Can use this as an album cover?” I said sure and he said “Cool see me in a year”. I replied a year later “How’s that album coming along?” and was like “give me another year” lol. It’s almost been two years now. Gonna check in again soon.
I hope we have threads stay alive for years
If the thread is still relevant - post away!
this was how it worked on forums back in the day, no? i see it as a revival of a good thing
