Could we possibly add a warning when someone is posting to a thread that is more than X months old? I can’t count how often I see someone dreg up a post from 2010 for a comment that adds absolutely nothing or even asks a question that’s barely even on the same topic - when they have clearly just stumbled to that post by a search and haven’t noticed how old it is.
Something like, “Warning: the post you’re commenting on was last posted to 3 years ago. Is this really a continuation of this discussion, and if so, is it worth bringing it up from the depths of time? Perhaps you want to create a new post instead?”
I’ve been on the net since the Usenet days and I understand internet culture doesn’t like ‘necro’ posts but there’s also the cross culture of getting sent to task because " didn’t this already get brought up in this old thread! how dare you post a new thread on this!" thing to consider too?
I have occasionally done a Google search and found a thread that matched my criteria perfectly ; just was a bit old. I’ve probably been guilty a couple of times of hitting reply without checking the last post date as well.
I think the forum software politely letting you know the last post is over (xx days old) is more than sufficient.
Banning or punishing people in any significant way from engaging in any reasonable (even if dated) speech on a forum seems rather overboard.
I agree to this, often there is a common problem in Unity that is well-addressed and discussed in a forum thread. And that thread may come up top in the search results when looking for how to resolve it. And someone might add something useful to the solution that may be relevant, such as something they had to do in a newer version of Unity etc.
But for pointless Necro’s that offer no value, yeah a warning would be good.
Just auto lock NOT auto delete. So if there is still some relevance in the topic when it is locked, then a new thread can be started in the same context using up to date tools, api’s etc
Call me mentally insane and completely out of whack but… I never understood what’s wrong with necro-posting.
An interesting subject will always be an interesting subject, what’s wrong with bringing it back preserving previous answers?
You want a brand new thread to speak about a subject that’s already being discussed in the past long ago? Yet… in the other hand, it’s also frown upon talking about subjects that are already being talked about in existing threads?
So how do we know if a thread is too old to bring back, or too recent to start a new one with same subject? Is the time range decided in some sort of secret council in Area 51? Huh? Tell me!
If the problem is that a thread can get too long after some time, then isn’t the solution a reply limit? If that makes any sense at all.
One problem is accidental misinformation. If you’re looking over the subject lines and see a topic title like, say, “How to get around the lack of realtime shadows” from 2005 - but you don’t notice that it’s from 2005 - you, as a hypothetical new Unity user, might suddenly think that Unity doesn’t support realtime shadows. For shadows, this is a very hypothetical situation, as I’m sure that almost everyone has seen Unity game screenshots with shadows. But what about less obvious (but still important) functionality, like editor scripting? You could easily get halfway through a topic from 2006 talking about how to add functionality to the editor that is completely irrelevant now - and not notice that it’s from before we had the ability to make custom inspectors. Worse yet - Unity has had three disparate GUI systems over the years; if you see a question about UnityGUI or even the Unity 1.x GUI system, you may be liable to get some very wrong ideas about the way Unity works that will make it harder to learn Unity effectively. Similar stories for particles and animation system discussions.
The problem is, people want it one way or the other and it can’t be one way or the other. It’s just not.
Some necro posting is bad, when a thread is bumped to the top with information that is outdated by old versions or old techniques, and the discussion is no longer relevant.
Some necro posting is good, because it’s a condensed thread made for collecting such things, or the information is still valid and relevant.
The real answer is that necro posting is a term that doesn’t even need to exist: “Necro” posting should be moderated justl ike regular posting, where if it’s useful and well-formed then it’s good, and otherwise it’s not. The problem is, there’s a constant schism between the people who already know things and the ones that don’t, sort of like the Reddit complainers about “reposts”: They complain when something is reposted in hours, which is valid, but they also complain when something is reposted in years, which is stupid.
So yeah, it just needs to be taken on a case-by-case basis, and any sort of “auto-locking system” is not a good idea at all. But auto-locking systems end up being put in place where necro-posting happens a lot, and it’s just a shotgun approach that stops the good and bad uses together.
Agreed. Sometimes an old thread is relevant; usually it’s not. I think it’s possible and practical for people to police themselves in this regard, which is why I suggested a warning before posting and not auto-locking the thread. The core contention is that most people who necropost pointlessly just don’t realize they’re necroposting.
Locking seems harsh, as you might actually WANT to bring that thread back to life. I like the idea in the picture above, where the NECRO is clear and obvious, so you KNOW it’s old.
I don’t care that others bring a necro back to life. I do however, feel really stupid when I contribute to that necro thread without noticing it.
Exactly. You can either do a necro post - and everybody freaks out, or you can create a new thread, in which case someone gives you a link to an older, already existing thread - and yours gets locked because it’s a “duplicate.”
I never understood it either.
