What's up with the revival of old posts?

I seem to see a lot pop out lately. A case of nostalgia?

when the boss says be happy, you're happy. capisci?

Originally posted by Eugene Abarquez:
I seem to see a lot pop out lately. A case of nostalgia?

I wish every case was solvable.

I was just thinking that it might fall on the lines of waking the zombies. But hey, I'm just wondering. And I now do realize that most of the posts were revived by "the boss," so I'll quit asking.

[ August 01, 2007: Message edited by: Eugene Abarquez ]

True. I suppose it really depends on what's the intent of the person doing the reviving. If they know it's an old thread, and they still think it's appropriate to revive it, they may have a valid reason. For example, sharing a funny video or joke that others may appreciate. Or maybe to add new information to an old discussion. But if posters simply don't realize it's an old thread, then we often see people spending time to answer a question where the original questioner is long gone, or solved the problem a long time ago. That would be a waste of time, and that's what "Don't Wake The Zombies" is primarily about. There are also a number of older discussions in MD about politics and religion which would simply be deleted today, because we don't let such discussions go as far as they used to. Waking up those old threads would be similarly pointless. So it depends on the post and situation, really.

Is it feasible to automatically close the topics that remain dormant for more than a year or two?? May be moderators, and people behind the design and operation of JR can give it a thought, i don't think it would harm much and also would not be untrackable because I see a feature on "my posts" section where I get have a column "last post" that tells me when was the last-time the thread got activated.

We have discussed this in the past, and came to the conclusion that sometimes there are valid reasons for reviving an old post, so closing all of them would not be a good thing.

But if you try to post into an old thread (I think more than 6 or 12 months old), there is a reminder that you need to click through in order to post a reply. Our hope was that people will read it before clicking OK

Let's take this discussion to the JavaRanch forum.
[ August 02, 2007: Message edited by: Ulf Dittmer ]