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Lot of mod time and front page space seems to be going out to thread necromancy. It occurred to me that if a topic has been inactive for around a month, perhaps a reply to that topic would not immediately go live but would instead need approval by a mod to be added. A brief message could explain to the user that unless the reply is bringing new information to the discussion, the message will likely not be posted.

Alternatively, just a 'Are you sure you want to post to a topic that is long dead?' dialog prompt would scale back the issue a bit I'm sure.

You read my mind. The 'are you sure' dialog message was something I intend to add, but it is at a fairly low priority compared to some of the other stuff I am working on so probably wont go live until the end of the year. Thanks for the suggestion anyway, it is indeed coming

Good idea (now that I've collected my cool anti necromancy image to insert everytime I take one down...oh well).

You knew this was coming:

Is one month a long enough time for a thread to be considered dead? There's P/M Blogs that routinely go inactive for that long.

I think it will have to depend on the forum and how much server overhead it takes to implement. At the moment I was thinking of it give the warning prompt if:
1. The thread has dropped off the first page of the forum
2. The thread has not had a reply in 6 weeks
3. The thread is not a project log, article or fiction thread

Seems like a waste of time to me. Like Polonius tacitly said in this thread http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/30/216957.page "Threadomancy" should pretty much be an out-dated concept, though I know a lot of people disagree.

Personally I am happy to ignore it, but I know some people like to write "Holy Threadomancy Batman!" when it happens, and who are we to take this away from them? Still, if you think it's an issue that can be fixed with minimal effort then go for it, but I'd prefer to see some more worthwhile fixes implemented instead (like search function).

The majority of thread necromancy posts are annoying, one off quips or comments like 'wow so cool' or 'great job' that simply show old content to old users again, making the forums feel less fresh. The warning message that will be displayed is specifically intended to discourage those sorts of posts. Actual detailed posts that expand or follow up on a topic are more tolerable and are more likely to be acceptable, as are posts by an OP of a topic. Yakface worded it well here.

The search function is pretty crappy but is also quite low down on the list of priorities right now as the new gallery stuff is coming, and then the search engine will need to be integrated between the gallery, the wiki and the forum. I have been tempted to just get a google tie in set up for now, as they have good search capabilities and coverage of our site and it would be quite quick and easy to tie it in. You can use google to search dakka by using this as your google query (eg; if searching for 'legoburner'):

site:dakkadakka.com legoburner

@ Legoburner: What about adding another thread icon to go with the "closed", "new" and "read" icons. It could be a skull or a gravestone to indicate that this thread is likely the target of threadcromancy?

I like the general idea, but it would be quite hard to determine what is thread necromancy (people adding inane comments to old posts), and what is not (valid followups to older posts) so I'm not sure how useful it could actually be. It might be useful in addition to having the 'are you sure you want to post in this ancient thread' warning come up.