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Howdy,

I noticed a thread about "What glue do you use for Mantic miniatures?" just got locked for necromancy. I've noticed that it's happened in the past also where I spotted a question to respond to only to find the thread was locked due to necromancy.

I appreciate that we have necromancy rules for a reason, but in the context of hobby/painting/modelling discussions I don't really see why we'd lock a new question to an old discussion.

The negatives to someone bumping an old thread is that the people involved with the original discussion may no longer frequent the forum, and maybe some of the products mentioned in the thread aren't available any more.

But I think the positives outweigh that, the knowledge base formed in the preceding thread likely hasn't changed so why restart the discussion from scratch, and I think people often find Dakka via googling a specific question which may link to an old "dead" thread. Certainly that's how I found most forums to which I'm currently a member.

In the context of painting/modelling subforums, I would personally preference people continuing previous discussions to consolidate information rather than restarting the same discussion over and over.

So, perhaps instead of locking the thread, a notice on the thread saying "Warning, this is an old thread resurrected through necromancy, contributing users may no longer frequent the forums and information may no longer be relevant" would suffice rather than a full lock?

Just a thought for the mods to consider.

I think that it's also a technical issue-reviving old threads mucks about with the technical side of the forum.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Howdy,

I noticed a thread about "What glue do you use for Mantic miniatures?" just got locked for necromancy. I've noticed that it's happened in the past also where I spotted a question to respond to only to find the thread was locked due to necromancy.

I appreciate that we have necromancy rules for a reason, but in the context of hobby/painting/modelling discussions I don't really see why we'd lock a new question to an old discussion.

The negatives to someone bumping an old thread is that the people involved with the original discussion may no longer frequent the forum, and maybe some of the products mentioned in the thread aren't available any more.

But I think the positives outweigh that, the knowledge base formed in the preceding thread likely hasn't changed so why restart the discussion from scratch, and I think people often find Dakka via googling a specific question which may link to an old "dead" thread. Certainly that's how I found most forums to which I'm currently a member.

In the context of painting/modelling subforums, I would personally preference people continuing previous discussions to consolidate information rather than restarting the same discussion over and over.

So, perhaps instead of locking the thread, a notice on the thread saying "Warning, this is an old thread resurrected through necromancy, contributing users may no longer frequent the forums and information may no longer be relevant" would suffice rather than a full lock?

Just a thought for the mods to consider.

The person he quoted (and hence was directing his comments to) only has a total of nine posts and hasn't posted on Dakka in seven years. As noted, it's better to start a new thread than resurrecting an old thread.

Potential problems with resurrecting an old thread are that the information can be out of date, broken links, references to models and products that no longer exist, etc.
It's also not always obvious that it's an old thread. Someone bumps a thread from years ago, and other people reading it think it's a new discussion from the start.

 Ghaz wrote:
The person he quoted (and hence was directing his comments to) only has a total of nine posts and hasn't posted on Dakka in seven years. As noted, it's better to start a new thread than resurrecting an old thread.

That doesn't preclude someone else from replying though, why eliminate the groundwork previously set out in the thread just because that person might not reply?

This is a forum, when you hit "reply" to someone, you aren't replying to that individual, you are replying to the content of that post and anyone can respond to it.

What I wrote at the end of my post; having a warning that the thread has been necroed and the original posters may not be present, I think addresses that problem as much as it needs to be address.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
Potential problems with resurrecting an old thread are that the information can be out of date, broken links, references to models and products that no longer exist, etc.

My thought would be "so what?"

Broken links can be annoying, but everything else to me is fine, the knowledge remains relevant even if the specific products haven't changed. At most you can just reply "X product doesn't exist any more, but Y product is a good alternative" or "there is no good alternative, try this instead".

That still seems better to me than starting the discussion from scratch again.

It's also not always obvious that it's an old thread. Someone bumps a thread from years ago, and other people reading it think it's a new discussion from the start.

I do agree on that point, I remember wasting a few minutes one time reading through a thread only to realise I already posted on it years prior But on some other forums I've read when a thread gets necro'd a bot automatically replies (or maybe appends the last post, don't remember) saying "warning: this thread is a necro" and people can choose to respond to it or not.

Seems like a warning is better than a hard lock, no?

Dakka already has a warning that appears.


In general some old threads can come back; the information is valid and the post that brings the thread back is relevant.

However if the thread is old and generic and the post that bumps isn't adding any value to new discussion then the thread itself isn't all that important. It's better to just start a fresh discussion on the topic.




Even something like glues can change over years. Brands come and go; properties of glues can change even within the same brand (eg go back 20 years and GW plastic glue would be recommended - today people recommend against it broadly speaking). These variations can create confusion because the old information at the start contests with the new that appears. Plus with a chance that many of the old posters not being around any more on site, there won't necessarily be any counter from them or acceptance of change. So you end up with a thread with diverging opinions which can be confusing to a new person.



Also a really old thread is less likely to get interest from people You, yourself already noted that you "wasted time" reading an old thread that you'd already replied too and had no interest in joining in. So its not promoting fresh discussion the same way a new thread would.



It's the nature of forums that many threads will go around and around and come back as new people come and go and as established people try new things. This is normal and healthy for the site, the same questions get asked, new answers appear. Much like a magazine where you can predict certain articles will appear at certain points in the year for the new people who joined up in the last big subscription push.

I suspect from the Mod's POV it's also easier to just have a blanket rule rather than having to make a judgement on each thread to see if the information is still relevant.

If the post that necros the thread is a direct response to the previous post it's likely useless as a reply either because the person they're replying to is no longer active or they no longer care. If it's just a general response along the lines of the topic then it probably should just be a new thread and if the person posting the reply in that case doesn't care enough to start a new thread it's questionable how vital the post was in the first place to warrant keeping a necro'd thread open.

They do make exceptions. Recently a "How many points worth of 40k models do you own?” thread was necroed from 2016. Still open. But more of a timeless question, and was fun to see how far I’d grown over the years.

I do think necromancy should be frowned upon in general. If you want to continue a thread that’s been resting, start a new one and link to it. That way people can be brought up to speed, but you have a divide between new/old info.

IMHO.

 Nevelon wrote:
They do make exceptions. Recently a "How many points worth of 40k models do you own?” thread was necroed from 2016. Still open. But more of a timeless question, and was fun to see how far I’d grown over the years.

I do think necromancy should be frowned upon in general. If you want to continue a thread that’s been resting, start a new one and link to it. That way people can be brought up to speed, but you have a divide between new/old info.

IMHO.

It depends on the thread. About threads regarding old information that might not be helpful now I can understand avoiding necromancy but I don't see any point in opening a new "How many points worth of 40k models do you own?”, and in general having multiple threads for the exact same thing is bad.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Ghaz wrote:
The person he quoted (and hence was directing his comments to) only has a total of nine posts and hasn't posted on Dakka in seven years. As noted, it's better to start a new thread than resurrecting an old thread.

That doesn't preclude someone else from replying though, why eliminate the groundwork previously set out in the thread just because that person might not reply?

This is a forum, when you hit "reply" to someone, you aren't replying to that individual, you are replying to the content of that post and anyone can respond to it.

What I wrote at the end of my post; having a warning that the thread has been necroed and the original posters may not be present, I think addresses that problem as much as it needs to be address.

He quoted an individual in that thread (much like I'm doing here), hence his reply was to that individual much like my reply here is to you.

Just to chime in, I do not auto-lock and copy-paste the same reply into every necro report I come across, I check the content first because yes, some topics can get a second life or a revival, whilst others are better off getting locked and rebooted due to the age of the original post, out of date info or in a lot of cases, the topic being about another edition altogether, looking at you, YMDC. A warning that a thread is being necro'd should pop up when this occurs, but given the state of the forums right now, I wouldn't be surprised if for some reason the message didn't properly trigger or that it was outright ignored when it did pop up.

In this case, I locked it given the age of the topic and if I recall correctly, Mantic has had one or more material changes since then? Anyway, the points brought up before are part of the reasoning behind locking this one.