Necroposting is a bad policy

Necroposting is a bad policy

I'm sorry, though I have been an Opera user for a long time, and an infrequent user of these forums, I have to say that posting rule #1 that encourages nectroposting is a bad policy. Many forums even have a policy against posting in any thread older than a month or so (or some maximum time). The resurrection of old, dead threads is commonly called necroposting and can easily lead to confusion.

One of the primary issues with this practice is that many people forget to check the date of the original post. So, they can easily be misled to think that the thread is current, when someone brings up an ancient thread and makes a new post at the end.

Another issue is that long threads tend to wander and good information gets harder to find while having to scroll through pages of semi-related posts. What could have been a short task of posting a quick question can turn into a long trek of slogging through dozens of unrelated posts looking for an answer, which may or may not be there.

Not everyone is epic on the search-fu. And most search functionality is not particularly robust.

People tend to lose interest in long threads. After someone has seen the same thread going for a while, they may not bother to check it.

If there are a number of issues that keep coming up over and over, just post a sticky FAQ collecting the answers and direct people to look at that before posting.

[EDIT to clarify: Searching for answers to ones questions is not a bad policy. Just the encouragement of resurrecting old threads.]

Necroposting is considered bad form on many forums, I do not understand why it is encouraged on this one? Is there some storage size issue on the back end?

Since the default search is only 3 months anyway, I don't really see it as a big issue.

On all the forums I frequent Necroposting is considered perfectly reasonable if you're adding to the discussion. True most such posts are of the "I agree LOLOLOL" sort (although in a wish list post such +1s are again, entirely reasonable).

The ones I dislike are the ones that used a Google search and came across a two-year-old post they think sounds vaguely similar to their problem - especially if they're wrong about the similarity. But ... well, they did try to search first, even if they didn't use the forum search ...

Originally posted by BtEO:

On all the forums I frequent Necroposting is considered perfectly reasonable if you're adding to the discussion. True most such posts are of the "I agree LOLOLOL" sort (although in a wish list post such +1s are again, entirely reasonable).

This is where our experience is different

at all the forums I go to, necroposting ([or necrobumping as it is also called) is viewed as a douche move, and will very frequently cause threads to be locked and even users banned.
There are even pictures that have been around the internet for a very long time that are very often used to convey the discontent that users have for necrobumpers
Personally I agree with the OP, and I would also add that lately it appears like the moderators have been absent from the forums (considering all the spamming and trolling happening)
Does the MyOpera Forums have a deficiency of moderators?

*bookmarks this thread, and s

I have no idea what forums you hang out on, but for the 10+ years I've been posting all over the net, this is the first time I've ever heard of "necroposting". The only time I see threads expire on sites I visit are where there has been a spam problem, and old threads collect it like flypaper collects dead flies. Sites with good filters don't need that, and anyone silly enough to not check the dates on the posts gets toasted by the regulars. Resurrecting a dead thread because of a news item or the like that after two years has been resolved makes sense to me (like a court case in the news, then years later it finally goes to trial...resurrecting the old thread gives you the opportunity to read the backstory). I can even make the case for tech issues. I KNOW I read something here on facebook issues. I am fairly good with a search, but have yet to find the original post I wanted to re-read, because it had some good info. Part of this is people starting new threads on old topics so you get 50 threads to search through.

You apparently hang out on forums where the level of civility leaves something to be desired, if it is necessary to ban folks for resurrecting old posts, or if posting old pics to show contempt is the way to go (I used to post a lot on one of those...burned out on the nonsense in a couple years and have quit).

I'd like to see a system where Opera can mark a post 'This solves the problem' so it'll automatically become post #2.

Ah like you! Yore funny! /Southern accent.