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Anti-Necrospamming

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Deozaan:
There's been a trend where spammers will revive an old thread that hasn't been posted in for several months or longer. Sometimes the spam has to do with the original thread (which is why it is revived) and sometimes it just happens to be a place to spam.

I thought it might be a good idea to automatically lock threads that haven't been posted in for, say, more than 6 months (though the length of time is debatable). This would actually serve 3 purposes:

1) It would prevent spammers from resurrecting old threads.
2) It would prevent new members from resurrecting old threads (they don't always realize the date on threads when they're new to the forum).
3) It would prevent regular members from getting confused when old threads are resurrected and not realizing the original post was made 3 years ago.

Additionally, if someone wanted to continue a conversation on a dead thread or start up a related topic, perhaps there could be a method of easily starting a new thread in the same forum section that links to the dead thread. This would allow new conversations to be brought up about old topics while allowing people to read the old material, but only contributing new material, thus keeping most of the information in the new topic up to date and relevant.

So what do the rest of you think? Good idea? Bad? Got a better suggestion? Indifferent?

app103:
i don't like the idea of closing old threads and opening newer ones to continue a discussion. It leads to fragmentation of discussions.

It doesn't matter if you close old threads when it comes to spammers, they will just post on newer ones or start a new thread of their own.

And we have never had issues with old threads being resurrected by members, whether they are new ones or old ones. A discussion is a discussion and one of the great things about this forum is that people don't freak out and come after you with pitchforks for wanting to drag up something old and bring it back to life.

mouser:
Perhaps what we could do is have the forum software more clearly note when someone is about to reply to and revive a very old thread, making clear that they should only do so if they have something to contribute.

app103:
That sounds like a good idea, a notice similar to the one you get when you are about to reply to a thread and another post was made since you hit the reply button.

There should also be some sort of marker between posts if the length of time between them is greater than a few months, to alert others that someone has in fact brought up an older topic.

cranioscopical:
It is useful, sometimes, to see that someone has added an 'updating' comment to an old thread. For example, when some software is updated to include a wished-for feature or a solution is found for a previously insurmountable issue.

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