Never heard of this before

[Stew-H]

the forum I'm a moderator on has a "no zombie thread" policy.  We have a lot of turnover, most people hang out for no more than 5-6 years.  I suppose it's natural that newbies want to talk about controversial subjects, but if the people that were having the conversation are all gone and some newbie comes and lambastes them, it isn't really a fair argument.  I've also seen vendors show up 10 years later to defend themselves, those we usually just  ban. We don't delete old threads, just close them.  Since this forum deletes old threads, bumping them occasionally and getting new discussion usually isn't a bad thing.  Unless it's a sawstop thread or something like that.

People really don't like replying to zombie threads.  A lot of times I have found myself typing the same thing, which is embarrassing.  OTOH, we don't allow harassing of other people, especially newbies.

I'm just curious...  If you have an actual policy pertaining to No Zombie Threads.  Why don't you just automatically delete the threads after a given amount of time without any activity?  Or maybe make them Read Only?

[KSMike]

That said, this forum (especially Hand Tools) is different from a lot of forums in that it's dedicated to old things, and often the old information remains just as valuable as new information.

Thing is, IMO the same thing applies to many, if not most, forums.  Complaining about "necroposting" is a way for Internet busybodies and retired micromanagers to have something to wring their hands about.

[EricU]

it really depends on how the thread gets de-zombified and how controversial the subject is.  Internet search engines drive a lot of our traffic, so deleting old threads would cut into that severely.

[AgGEM]

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Is there not a pun here?
Ag

[Mike Brady]

Quote: Is there not a pun here? 
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If there was a prize, you would be the winner.