I thought the rule was that if there is an existing thread for a topic we should use it, rather than spaghettifying the forum by creating new threads all the time for old topics.
Has that changed?
Horizons How to refuel SRV?
- Thread starter Vitamin Arrr
- Start date
Has that changed?
IME if there is a rule it's quite relaxed & more down to whether anyone complains than any guidelines. Some contributors don't like resurrecting threads, which is understandable in situations where the original advice provided is no longer relevant because the game has changed, less so where an element of the game has not changed (or a bug still persists etc).
Personally if there is an existing active or recently active thread I can remember enough about to find I'll post a link to it usually without reporting the new thread as a dupe & leave it to the readers to decide which thread to continue to contribute to. Suggesting a thread be closed purely because of the date the last post was written seems churlish to me
How to gather basic mats and refuel an SRV isn't a commonly asked question & the act hasn't changed so significantly that any comment here isn't still useful to a novice player that probably just googled for the answer, found an old thread & decided to respond to it. That seems a better option to me than starting a new thread without searching for an answer first.
TL: DR leave it to the mods to decide imo.
I thought that rule was more for currently active threads.
This thread started mid 2016 was reactivated from 10 months to a year later, three and a half years later still it was raised again then nearly another 3 years past to the current incarnation. So a new thread would hardly be a duplicate.
My issues with bringing back threads from so far back are (1)technical ie stuff has changed so much the advice may now be detrimental and (2)emotional there are people who are for whatever reason no longing posting but are missed and ancient necros can raise false hopes.
Necro'd posts are usually a result of someone not taking the time to ensure the thread they are posting to is current and relevant. We see this frequently on these forums. Not all old threads are necro... some are living breathing threads continuosly being updated with new info. They were never dead. In the case of a 2016 thread that layed dormant for a very long time.... it was dead. In this particular example the info contained wasn't necessarily obsolete... so no biggee.
a) Often the person that necro'd a thread didn't notice it is a necro... they just found the thread in a search and are responding to ancient discussion. This is a waste of time for everybody.
b) People reading threads on forums often fail to notice the date on a thread being necro'd.
- So they waste time reading a bunch of ancient crap before realizing it is ancient.
- Or they respond to the OP instead of the most current post. The message in the recent post gets missed by some, instead replies emerge in context to the ancient OP.
c) Often the title of a necro can really confuse people. The recent necro on the News & Announcement subforum is a good example.
d) Often the content found within ancient necro posts is obsolete, incorrect, or misleading.
e) Many people don't like having to read through ancient necro posts to understand the context of the resurrecting post. Yes people could ignore the entire thread, which many do. But not all old threads are necro... sometimes they just have a long lifespan with continuous fresh posts and updates. These aren't neco, just long lived.
If I have an actual game question I wouldn't be resurrecting a thread started in 2016 and then layed dormant. It would be a fair assumption that most of the content is obsolete.
I blame gogglifying vs this board's abysmal search function.
You should check out the Vogons forum
There are going to be different players that act in different ways. If someone resurrects a thread that is now obsolete it will be picked up & corrected by a more experienced forum contributor just as someone posting a new thread where there is already a current thread (this is common immediately after a patch with new bugs or queries about new functionality).
I'm very much not in favour of berating new forum members for doing the wrong thing (either way), I don't think it conveys a helpful impression on them no matter how frustrated they are with their inability to get their head around what can be quite a frustrating & unintuitive game to a novice.
Meaning in the context of forum questions for a video game that gets regular updates and an occasional DLC, making much of the old info truly obsolete except maybe for historical reference.
Being the person that tried to answer the cmdr's question as best as possible, I really don't think I was rude or berating anybody. Simply agreeing that its a necro and then answering the question as best as possible is hardly rude. IMO. For some weird reason my reply to the question posed initiated attack towards myself. Whatever... moving on.
At this point I feel like "to necro or not to necro" isn't the issue here but rather, why is a thread that ought to be about SRV refuelling constantly drawing my attention when the discussion is all about "to necro or not to necro" (which I don't care two hoots about). Can we either take the necro discussion elsewhere and leave this thread on topic or change the title of this thread to something like "when is it acceptable to necro".
Edit: just did a quick check, there are currently 18 posts here about SRV refuel and 30 posts about forum necroing!
Edit: just did a quick check, there are currently 18 posts here about SRV refuel and 30 posts about forum necroing!
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I mean, I would ... but I'm actually quite interested in the original topic.
If that's an actual problem, then the solution is not to ban "necroing" but to make the original post date more visible and obvious so it's hard to miss.
Since you initiated the digression of this thread, maybe you should make you own thread on Necro and let this thread either return to its topic or vanish back into the archives.