Hello all,
What is the current position of this forum on necroposting? Is it allowed? What counts as necroposting? For example, if the last post on a topic thread was a month ago, is it necroposting to reply to it? What about if it is to detail a solution or include an epilogue to your own thread?
I have some threads I am interested in contributing to, but I do not want to be seen as exhuming and reviving old conversations.
Thanks,
John
Just my opinion:
People being annoyed by what they call necroposting are often more annoying than the act itself. They apply this overly rough one month rule of thumb without being able to define what is actually annoying.
I would say, that an issue is not dead, if you can contribute anything useful to it. Of course, if it is not useful, polite criticism should be based on that regardless of the time frame.
I think it is the best usage of community resources if anyone has the feeling that one can speak up on any topic at any time, if one considers one’s contribution useful in any way.
If answering to an old thread whose issue remains unsolved or following up on something based on recent findings, it is an extremely bad use of those community resources, if someone fears to be reprehended and therefore remains silent.
Contributing new things to old threads is more efficient, because you are more likely able to reach those who were interested in the topic back then.
No policy on this yet. I personally don’t have an issue with it. I think @wind.gmbh brings up many good points.
I agree completely with what you said and have always been mystified with this concept of “necroposting” as well. Of course one should not bump an ancient thread about a solved problem with an unhelpful reply (such as “bump”), but this is not a problem with necroposting per-se, just with low-quality contributions that revive old threads and clutter the top of the list with misleadingly active discussions. Unfortunately, I think the concept of “necroposting” resulted from a hasty generalization of this behavior onto all thread revivals, whose enforcement solidified its place in netiquette ever since.
With that said, there remains some situations in which the appropriate behavior is not entirely clear. For example, let’s say that there is an old thread whose last post was a month ago or longer, and the discussion in that thread resolved into a decision that concluded it quite nicely. But if one was not party to this discussion and wishes to challenge the decision or otherwise reopen the discussion in the hopes of reaching a different conclusion, or perhaps just append their own observations after the fact, then how should one proceed? Reply to the old thread with the intent of disputing its conclusion, or create a new thread that attempts to rehash it?
More generally, at what point is a thread too “stale” or “complete” to be revived, as opposed to rediscussed in a new thread? Your logic would suggest that one should reply to the old thread in all such situations for the efficient reasons you specified, but the optics of unsettling a settled discussion and disturbing its pristine resolution with a belated reply weeks or months later remains unappealing. In this sense, the concern I have remains in the realm of propriety rather than reason: doing so may be logical, for a certain conception of logic, but is it appropriate?
That is the crux of my concern: the best way to disturb the peace.
Regards,
John
I think here we’re talking about an edge case. Teaching the etiquette of this forum (or forums in general) is already hard enough. But now you combine teaching the etiquette of edge cases is just an impossible and unrewarding task.
I say just let it roll. All I can do is split the thread into a new on if I see it is tangential but not totally related. But all in a best-effort basis.
I suppose you’re right, @deeplow. I am more of a plan-and-simulate-before-execution kind of guy rather than a trial-and-error one, so I often suffer from analysis paralysis. Maybe the best decision is to just try anyway and let it serve as a lesson, regardless of the outcome.
Thanks everyone for the input.
John