The rules on thread necromancy

I'm not really clear on the rules for thread necromancy here. The forum rules say as follows:

• On thread necromancy versus the creation of new threads: Neither one is de facto "bad form" here. Either is acceptable, depending on the thread and why it's being brought up again.

However, some moderators on the OTC forum seem to be autolocking threads simply for being necromantic, with no further explanation. Has the rule changed without announcement? Or am I seeing a policy change that isn't there?

edited 7th Jun '15 4:59:25 AM by Ramidel

My understanding is that the vast majority of the old threads that get necro'd in OTC fall into two categories. The first is threads that wouldn't fly under the new restrictions for creating thread topics (which makes sense, seeing as they were created before those regulations were put into effect). The second are threads that get revived via a pointless necro, done in a way that either violates OTC rules for discussion or more general forum rules.

I would agree that there probably should be a slight modification to those rules to indicate that necroing in OTC is a little more complicated. And if there are cases where mods are stomping on threads that don't match the above issues, then we need to have a chat about this.

edited 7th Jun '15 5:26:03 AM by TotemicHero

I do find it a bit problematic that people holler based merely upon "necromancy" with no further considerations mentioned explicitly. I've opted to be a bit selective as to which hollers of this sort I act on and which not.

The issue being that it takes two to tango; i.e. someone has to respond to the hollers by agreeing and locking the thread. (Or the alternative, that the mods themselves don't remember the actual policy and are just locking stuff on their own.)

Looking back...I see four such thread necros, locked by three different moderators. I'm pretty sure that these three are the ones who need to come in here and talk this out.

Or alternately, this debate belongs in this thread instead, in which case they need to go there. Either works.

I think it depends on what kind of post it is. Responding to a multi-year post is a bit bad form. On the other hand, bringing new information to a topic seems acceptable, but then it also depends on what kind of thread it is.

Some threads are continuous, covering many events and changes in an overall topic (politics, culture, etc.), and a thread like that would be one acceptable place. If it's a more confined topic about a specific event or topic that doesn't continuously evolve, then it's probably better to create a new thread. Threads about works can (almost) always be revived.

Sometimes asking a Mod first, if the topic is controversial, can help too.

I allow necros that add new information to a topic or revive it with fresh discussion. A necro should acknowledge that the thread is being dug up from the grave and state a rationale for continuing it.

If your necro looks like you found the thread on Google search and didn't bother reading the timestamp, then we'll usually lock it.

It'd be nice though if those threads were closed with posts explaining that, instead of just stating "this is a years-old necro, locking" in some form. Because that gives the impression that it was locked specifically for being a necro, instead of how said necro was handled.

And honestly, the only way to tell for sure is to get the specific mods in here to explain. (Which you have done, Fighteer, so I give you credit there. And I do agree with you for it, after looking back at it again.)

Yeah, that was my concern. I don't have a dog in any of the actual zombie threads, but a lot of the locks are explained solely with "necro, locking," in ways that imply that necromancy itself is bad. So I suppose I would like to ask the mods if they could explain the problem more in their lock posts.

We'll make an effort to leave more detailed reasons for closing necros.

edited 8th Jun '15 9:20:52 AM by Fighteer

Thank you. I was wondering about that too.

Thank you

What they said.

I would point out that, immediately following the single sentence that is quoted in the OP, are these clarifying points:

• If the new post is in response to something relevant in the old thread, it makes more sense to necro the old one rather than try to recap the whole previous discussion.
• If the new post is tangential or only partially related to the old thread, making a new thread may make more sense.
• If the old thread degenerated into a fight or shitposting, there's no point in trying to necro it — it will simply pick back up with fighting or shitposting, 95 times out of a hundred.
• On the left-hand side of the forum, it's almost always preferable to necro an old thread in Trope Repair or Image Picking than to make a new one.
• The only things close to rules that we have about necro'ing an old thread is "don't necro just for lulz" and "don't necro to continue a fight."

I would say even still, necro-ing a thread to comment on a post made three years ago is pretty much worthless. Because obviously no one is keeping up with the thread and the people involved may not even be frequenting the site anymore.

If the old discussion might be relevant to the new one, you can link to it in your new thread.

How old is too old to respond to? New people getting involved can be worth something.

After a year or so there's really no difference between resurrecting a thread and starting a new one— at that point whatever sense of community the thread might have had will be gone

We play it by ear, but a year is certainly long enough for a thread to have died a natural, peaceful death.

And if the thread is about general discussion on a movie or tv show, no reason a new one has to be made. If the thread is on a specific idea and the discussion has long went sideways, then might as well start something new.

I've never seen a thread about a work get locked for necromancy, which makes sense since the policy, IIRC, is to have one thread per work (sometimes with exceptions for different adaptations, parts of a series, or specific topics within a work).

Works also don't get old in the same way other discussion topics do. The community within the thread is more about fans of the work regardless of time, whereas for other topics it's much more often who was involved in that particular discussion.

Also, there's no "community" in OTC beyond the Military Thread at best. That one's closer to a general discussion than any other topic. So bumping a topic should be irrelevant to its community in OTC alone. What matters most is if it's on-topic, relevant, and worth saying and the person you're responding to isn't banned.

And sometimes it's still not worth the necro anyway. It may be best to let it lie.

OTC is kind of odd though. It has a huge back log of rather old and rather dead threads. There is a large number of threads who last post was over 4 years ago. Some of them pop up to the surface from random posts. The majority of those have a short lived rebirth or are locked in short order. I understand the value of keeping some select threads around but most of them have had their topic of choice die out.

Usually, OTC topics die natural, peaceful deaths. Digging them out of the grave creates horrible monstrosities.

The trend does seem to lend itself to reviving a particularly old thread and having it go sour quickly. Out of curiosity is there any reason to keep some of the really old threads that have long since died? We have over 1,000 threads four years or older. Their topics are largely all dead, merged into general topic threads, and there are more then a few that would have never survived the thread opening process we use now.

You might say we have grave yard of potential necromantic horrors only awaiting the careless, reckless, or the unknowing to turn them loose. While they aren't quite a huge problem they seem to be a rather persistent one. Most of them I can only attribute to either trolling or surfing the old topics out of boredom and starting them up again.

edited 15th Jun '15 4:43:21 PM by TuefelHundenIV