New thread or old?

[Foobicam]

The only bother is people keep making new redudant topics obfuscating the search. This is why I am trying to make people understand that they should search before asking.

(quote extracted from flame war in General Discussion)

One of my first experiences on this forum (with 2 or 3 posts) was to search for a subject, reply to it, and then get flamed for thread necromancy because the previous response was three weeks old.  (I won't speculate on whether the flame was motivated by genuine concern for usability of the forum, or by the flamer's need to stroke his own, umm, ... ego.)

IMO, a forum is easier to use and less cluttered if all the discussion on a single subject is in a single thread, even if the gap between two posts is six months.  So what do others think?  If a thread is old but still relevant, should it be added to, or should a new thread be started on the same subject?  If you prefer thread spam, at what age is a thread considered stale?

[vcxzet]

necromancy ftw

[n00b pl0x]

necromancy ftw

+1

[Sjoerd]

Depends on the subject, how old it is, what you have to say, etc..

You probably did nothing wrong, it's just that some annoying idiots feel the need to fill every thread with spam/junk and should have their post count reset every time they do.

Downside of responding to old threads is that others have to read everything again and aside of that might not notice the age and respond on things that are no longer at hand or the original writer left and will no longer read it.

So if something is already a few month old I think you might be best of starting a new topic, you can then always include a link to other topics you found on the subject and/or quote things you need. Again it all depends on the situation at hand.

p.s. Battle Grangers are cool.

[David]

For things like suggestions etc, and the dretch head bite threads, add to old ones. For stuff in trouble shooting, ask again, unless your question is identical, in which case just fix it using the heal given to the last person.
Its annoying trying to help someone with a ton of out of date / irrelevant stuff at the top of the thread.

[techhead]

In a cruel twist of Irony, I am necromancing a thread on whether or not one should necromance threads.

[_Equilibrium_]

In a cruel twist of Irony, I am necromancing a thread on whether or not one should necromance threads.

2 weeks is not really a necro. i consider at least 1 month (probably more) a necro.