What's wrong with necroposting?

Some of the users on over at Digitalpoint are idiots because it doesn't matter if you bump an old topic or not there because signatures doesn't hold any weight anymore since they became "nofollow" and really, the only need I see in bumping a topic is if you can provide more content towards the thread, and hold more conversations.

So, anyways, how many forum owners here see a lot of new users bumping old topics? Do you ask them questions and such as to how they found the thread and try to stir more conversations from it?

 

Well, in my books any reply is good as long as it's 1. a still relevant topic (wouldn't want to talk about Christmas in July) and 2. of a decent quality. I INSTANTLY ban accounts and delete posts if someone is posting junk. Even if English is not an official language for you, try to post something meaningful. If not, there's always another forum admin out there who accepts this crap. Have see a lot of 'seo specialists' do this to plug their links and it's why my forum is nofollow. I had another one with dofollow and they were flooding in like rats from a sinking ship. Well, not on this one.

 

Self proclaimed seo specialists are so annoying with their forum spam.

 

Ok, ok. I get it. Ha. Ha. You are necroposting here to make a point, right?

Scott

 

I don't mind old threads being bumped up in my community as long as users continue to add on the to discussion with relevant information. Sometimes it's better to start a fresh topic though in a new thread.

 

My policy on posting in old topics is if you have something worthy enough to contribute to the topic and get it active again, go for it! However, if you just have some one line "I agree" or something like that kind of response, its better to just make a new topic.

 

Personally, I like the way that you think because if a user just spams on an old topic, we'll just remove their post and send it to our trash can. If they're not offering anything new to the table, then its spam-worthy in my book.

 

I've never really understood why people do not like necroposting either, I personally I have no problem with it. You can either bump an old topic to bring it back to life, or you can simply re-create the topic to re-start the discussion, both are perfect things to do in my eyes. Especially if the users have email notifications, it has a small chance of bringing some old members back or reminding them to post. We all have our own rules and opinions though.

 

The advantage of necroposting is it keeps the topic together. That way if someone is searching for information it's all in one thread. It also makes it easier on staff, because if new people ask a question, you can link them to one thread, instead of having to keep track of several.

The most common scenarios I see for necroposting is a new member has found the thread with Google and has no sense that it's an old thread. It's new to them. So they join the forum just to participate. Not much of a welcome if they get reprimanded for their first post.

 

That is just a perfect reason why necroposting is really not a big deal at all.

 

I'm one of those Admins that does not allow zombie posting. Here's why. We've been online for 15 years. We have threads going back to 2003. During that time LOTS of members have come and gone. Unfortunately a fair number have died over the years. When people resurrect old threads it causes all manner of problems - members that left years ago suddenly appear in the current thread list as a thread starter. We've had a great many members see "so and so's" name on a thread at the top of the thread list and think - look that jerk, wonderful guy, dead guy is back again. We've had widows tell us that they got an email telling them that their long dead spouse got an email about a post on our forum. As you might imagine, they are VERY unhappy about that.

No one and I do mean no one looks at the thread / post dates. If it's on the "new post" list or the top of an index is must be brand new.

Lastly, 98 times out of 100, the post that brings the thread back does not add anything to the thread. And, the vast majority of resurrected threads were about a specific issue that ceased to be valid years ago.

If your forum is small, not a lot of members and has only been around 3 or 4 years then OK, zombie threads aren't so bad. But when you've got 7 million posts, by 100,000 members and 12 years of posts in the database you'll understand why Zombie posting isn't a good thing.