Posted on a topic about fantines bakery achievements that was already a remake thread due to necro rules. Apparently, even though it was on the first page of the achievement suggestion forum not very far down it was considered a necro due to the 2 years between the final post and mine.

All well and good for some forums, but for things like suggestions would it not be better to just get rid of the rule since if the suggestion hasn't been implemented but there is still support we keep all the support in one area? Cuz I like subeta, but I am not about to remind myself how to create links to link to two separate threads to go "This has been a topic for X years and still not done but I would like it done"

Perhaps given the state of activity on the forums it might be time to tweak some of the rules regarding them.

Yes I don't really see why Suggestions shouldn't be excluced from the necro rule like Site Feedback is. It has a longer time (15 months) which feels arbitrary anyway. Why a year and 3 months?

6 months is in general too short for a lot of subforums, but I think the problem is more that we have too many subforums. I feel like I remember talk of cleaning up the subforums, removing a number of them (maybe it was a suggestion). That definitely needs doing, but with our activity levels I think 6 months as a rule is too short anyway. A year at minimum would be fine imo. Anything more than that and it starts to get irrelevant for forums like General Discussion and so on. While it's fine for forums like Advertising.

I don't even know why necro rules are still a thing to be honest, especially if Staff wants people to be on the forums. Maybe they were useful and needed during the site's heyday but I don't think they are needed anymore.

I agree that this rule doesn't make a whole lot of sense with the amount of activity in the forums, especially with things like suggestion threads. It makes sense to have the same suggestions, feedback, and opinions about it in one place.

As one of the minimods, yeah for S&I I wish it was longer with the exception of the yearly event boards. The issue though too is that if they are "active" for longer stretches people are less likely to go through the forum pages before posting. Then boards get closed for duplicates which I know for users is frustrating. I fully get how posting in S&I can make some users anxious.

Necro rules should def still be a thing depending on what forum you are in like in the r/200. If a seller hasn't responded in xxx amount of months, then yeah I totally think the thread should be locked as the seller is likely not active. It just makes it look messy if so many people are asking about items in a ghost thread and no op response on any.

But I do agree the rule of necro threads should be more lean, especially on other forums that don't get as much traffic that frequently.

Support for removing the rule or adjusting it for things like suggestions, but not for everywhere else. Like Narshe said, year old sales threads shouldn't be necroed, and in my opinion, if a topic is really still relevant a year later, it's better to make a new thread than to revive one that's several pages back. I understand that the forums aren't as active as they once were, but allowing threads from years ago to jump to the top of the list makes things feel like even more of a ghost town than they already are.

Maybe the necro rule could be amended to be that topics past the second page should no longer be posted on after a certain amount of time, or a notice could be added when topics reach a certain age without new activity to let people know that they should maybe move on or make a new topic if they still want to discuss whatever was being discussed.

For me, it's not a "ghost town thing" but a comfort thing. I don't venture into forums I know aren't active or even in the second page of the active ones because I don't want to accidentally post on something that's a tad too old and be reprimanded for it. I hate feeling like I have to tiptoe around the forums for things like what kind of pet I have. Those are the kind of discussions that can easily be revived and inconveniences nobody.

I guess I can see it for selling/buying/services but I also don't make a habit of going beyond the first page because I'm impatient. I don't know how much of a problem nercoing is on those kinds of threads. The ones I do see get necroed a lot are non-Subeta things that seem innocent enough.

Oh, I also definitely don't think that people should be reprimanded for necroing! I've never done it myself so didn't know that people were actually getting in trouble for it - I assumed it was just a "hey, this topic is really old so we're going to lock it actually :)" from staff, but if it's more than that, that's my bad.

This is one of those things that I feel like would be better dealt with by auto-locking threads of a certain age (excluding feedback, suggestions, etc.) as opposed to punishing users for posting on them. It's such an innocent offense, with almost no chance of ill intent behind it. Especially considering how much the site pushes forum interaction, it seems counter intuitive to instill fear of punishment in users for posting on threads that are arbitrarily "too old".

Looking at the actual rule on necroing, it says that topics past the age limit will be locked by ForumBot, what ever happened to that?

Theres been a couple of threads that I have wanted to post on, but seeing the last post as being over a year old makes me concerned about violating a necro rule. Example being the Mori/Nori brainstorming thread.

Theres a lot of threads that are near the front page, but definitely old

Like many other people I’ve seen over the years, the Necro rule has actually prevented me from engaging with the community and with the site’s current state, encouraging user & forum interaction should be the goal, methinks.

I would really love to see this rule revisited or abolished.

I definitely understand having rules against, say, someone spamming one-word responses to a bunch of old threads to get their post count up, or just be annoying, or whatever. That makes sense.

But there's been a few times I've seen where someone relatively new has posted on a thread that was still relevant, had clearly read through the thread and put a lot of thought into their response, basically did nothing wrong at all - except not notice the date on the thread, and suddenly boom, thread locked and they're told not to post on old threads. That, to me, is a stupid policy. Absolutely stupid, makes no sense, and discourages people from posting. (Can you tell I kinda hate it? lol)

I think the mods here are smart enough to know the difference between someone who's just trying to participate, and someone's who's trolling - and I think they should be allowed to make that distinction and not have to lock up every single thread just because it's old. As long as the topic is still relevant and good points are being made, I don't see why the thread can't stay open, and all the relevant discussion stay in one place. Especially since we currently don't have a search function on the forums, and probably won't for some time.

I would support revising this rule for forums where it would be reasonable to continue posting. However, maybe a no pinging rule could be added past a certain amount of time to these kinds of long-term topics? I wouldn't care to be pinged back to old threads personally.

This one feels tricky for me 'cause on the one hand I can see the importance of not necroing old threads and therefore haven't complained when I've accidentally done it, but on the other hand, I have definitely felt that need to start tip-toeing around more because I don't want to cause problems. (I'm never going to remember to check the date on threads. I'm just simply not. I'd rather just not engage.) But definitely, one of the places I for sure feel that struggle is Suggestions - I always want to poke in old threads and go, "Hey this was a really good idea, whatever happened to it?"

I think there's a better way to deal with it.

It's really annoying to go into the forums, find a thread that is about the same thing that I want to ask about and not be able to respond instead of having to start a new thread...

And I think if someone goes into a thread and posts dumb stuff to a bunch of unrelated threads to get their post count up you can say, uh, this guy posted to 10 consecutive threads with a bunch of nonsense, clearly they are trolling and that's not allowed.

There's nothing wrong with being subjective and making a judgement call when the difference is literally between people going

"hey, I wondered the same thing too! have you noticed that--"

and a bunch of spam emojis and one liners.

As I stated I am not against it. I only listed why it may have been potentially done to begin with. I don't make rules, I am just helping enforce what we currently have.

What I think will help regardless is trimming up forums because we have so many of them. I would kill for an upvote downvote in suggestions so those fearful or anxious could still give input with less typing, especially if it works regardless of being locked or not. Should be easier to filter suggestions then for popularity and if locked, still know the idea is wanted. For ForumBot to actually work. And for the Necro rule to be modified.

As much as I hate participating in unwitting necromancy, just out of sheer "Oops, I wonder if half the people on this thread are still active" factoring in, the necro rules do seem very arbitrary at this point with so few users... using the forums. Especially outside CWs.

I understand why they were a thing to begin with and maybe an adjustment with the current userbase number in mind is needed? Not so much completely doing away with the rules but adjustments never hurt anyone.