Reviving old threads

I have a simple question. Why is it such a huge deal if someone revives a thread to renew discussion? I recently saw in the FFX forum a thread on basically who to kill: Luzzu or Gatta. It was promptly closed, since it was 4 yrs old.

Now really what is the huge deal with reviving it, and renewing a discussion? And if it is such a big deal, why not just enable auto-prune, and have such threads deleted, thus saving space for the website.

On another note, suppose someone, perhaps out of spite, now decides to create a new thread on the same exact subject? It's not reviving a thread, but serves the same exact purpose as posting in an old thread....it creates discussion, which was what I thought these types of sections are for, discussion. Would that thread now be closed? And if it was, that is totally defeating the purpose of having a forum in the first place.

It's not a huge deal. It's also not a huge deal to simply start a new thread. And that's what we encourage people to do, start a new thread so that the thread can be current and up to date rather than old as heck. So no, it wouldn't be closed.

On another note, suppose someone, perhaps out of spite, now decides to create a new thread on the same exact subject? It's not reviving a thread, but serves the same exact purpose as posting in an old thread....it creates discussion, which was what I thought these types of sections are for, discussion. Would that thread now be closed? And if it was, that is totally defeating the purpose of having a forum in the first place.This is actually what they say you should do, instead of reviving old threads, you should remake the thread if you think it warrants more discussion

edit: and auto deleting threads to save space is blasphemous, every thread is just as important than the last, maybe even more so!

We don't have enough real problems to deal with because the place is run so well, so we make up rules like "no reviving old threads."

Really though, the idea is that more people will join in on a new discussion, but if you restart a very old discussion, newer people might be confused and think there was some long discussion on the topic over the last day or two that they somehow missed, and decide not to both wading into the topic. You also get the weird phenomenon (if you are an oldbie) of reading a revived thread and thinking that Asorie has come back and started posting again, or something.

If you want to start a new thread, and you can find another thread on the first page of the forum* that covers the same topic, you should just post in that topic. But if the old thread on the same topic has dropped off the front page of the forum, it's probably old enough that it would be better to just start a new thread and have a new discussion.

*In General Chat you might want to search for threads updated in the last month rather than just look at the first page of threads, since the traffic is high enough in there for recent and still viable threads to fall off the front page.

Old threads:

-Push newer, more relevant topics down to the bottom of the page.
-Create confusion because they may involve members and comments that were long forgotten. It's just best to start a new discussion on the matter.

We used to prune (that's for you champ) old topics but we don't anymore because we don't have space issues. They are there for reference purposes. The only other option would be to close topics once they are a certain age, but since the cutoff date is arbitrary depending on a number of factors, that would just be too much of a hassle.

I've always been of the opinion that if it was a unique topic, and the person had something relevant to add, then it could stay around as long as it wasn't <i>too</i> old. But 4 years? Come on.

Yea, you really have to dig (or search on an obscure topic) to come up with a four year old thread.

It's really creepy to start typing a response to a thread only to realize you've already typed a response to it five months ago and you were going to say the exact same thing.

I suggest making a new rule that the only old threads that are ok (and even encouraged) to revive are the "reviving old threads" Feedback threads so there isn't a new one every 3 months to respond to.

Or, you know. We could just STicky this one.

Didn't we have one stickied originally anyway, with Dr Unne posting in it?

I'm sure it's in the things you'll be made fun of for asking thread that's already stickied.

what if I like answering the same question every few months? A question isn't bad to ask just because it's been asked and answered in the past. besides, most people post in feedback because they want sensible conversation with a few jokes, and the actual topic is just a pretense to having a valid thread.

I'm sure it's in the things you'll be made fun of for asking thread that's already stickied.
I've added it just now, good call.

It's really creepy to start typing a response to a thread only to realize you've already typed a response to it five months ago and you were going to say the exact same thing.

tee hee hee! That happened to me in another forum :p

I do think game tips threads should be exempt though. Those are kind of timeless. Even if the OP has finished the game, there are always new people stuck, why rewrite all the advice on a new thread ?

Is a month-old thread ok to revive?

Most probably not in GC, but other forums are case by case.

How about in Feedback?

Ba dum, TSH.

How about in Feedback?

Did I close it? :)