A suggestion vis a vis necroposting
Posted by: Zowayix
Date: 2013-06-11 04:43:06
Anyway, it seems there's a lot of topics here that haven't been posted in for over 4 months, but there could probably be some useful* discussion added to it. It probably doesn't help the forum's low activity level at the moment that people might be about to post in these topics and generate some discussion, but they can't, because the rules say not to. Of course, I'm not saying we should be able to go into old random threads and say "bump" or "hey how you doin man" "HALP PLX" etc, which is what the rule is most likely intended to avoid.
So, I'm thinking it would help activity around here if the rule was changed to something like "no completely useless posts just to keep a thread alive", or otherwise relaxed a bit to encourage posting.
I know the public beta would be the main reason for the inactivity and I know that won't change until it's ready, but we might as well make the most of the forum in the meantime.
[li]Do not post in topics that are over 4 months old, unless there is significant reason to do so. TEMPORARY AMENDMENT Since the maintenance has made all topics that were alive at the time it started dead, you are allowed to post in topics where the time gap between the date of the last post in the topic and December 10, 2010 plus the time gap between October 16, 2011 and today does not equal more than 120 days.
Example:
October 23, 2010 - Last post in a topic
December 10, 2010 -Start of maintenance
Gap of 48 days
October 16, 2011 Maintenance end
Novmeber 11, 2011 "Today"
Gap of 26 days
26+48 = 74 days. 74 < 120 It is fine to post in the topic.[/li]
[li]Stickies, by their nature, cannot be "bumped" and thus are exempt from this rule.[/li]
[li]In general "significant reason" means actual new content relevant to the topic, or recent news concerning said topic. This will be decided on a case-by-case basis by moderators and administrators.[/li]
The second footnote seems a bit ambiguous if it would allow necromancing general discussion-type threads or forum games with new posts relevant to that thread; if it is perfectly allowed as it is, some clarification on that would perhaps be nice. Otherwise, the situation as it is now would mean you have to create zillions of duplicate topics everywhere, which doesn't seem like something you want posters to be doing.
* Useful in this context is redefined to mean will cause a bit more forum activity