6 ms·

I can get behind closing stale issues, to a certain degree, but this practice sound straight-out stupid: Why would you discard the context of a previews discuss

I can get behind closing stale issues, to a certain degree, but this practice sound straight-out stupid: Why would you discard the context of a previews discussion?

TeMPOraL 5y ago
At the risk of spinning of a tangent flamewar: this ties into a wider issue that boggles my mind to this day - the concept of "necroposting" as something negative. People will commonly want to eat you alive if you post a new reply under a stale discussion thread, but that reaction feels really dumb. The old context is useful.
- travisjungroth 5y ago
  Agree for intelligent discourse about a slow-moving topic. Disagree for conversations about personal opinions (most of forums), especially ones with time context. When you post on a three year old thread, everyone else has left the room. That's fine if you want to share how you finally got this old sound card working on a specific OS, lame if there was a lively discussion about working at Lyft versus Uber.
  - lucideer 5y ago
    Firstly there's a 3rd type: someone asks for help and you post a suggested solution 3 years later. Extremely useful for all the lurkers who also had the same question and are reading looking for possible solutions. But secondly, even your own counterexample I don't think checks out. If I'm browsing your forum & interested in perspectives on working at Lyft v Uber, I absolutely want to read a recent update and contrast that with what people thought 3 yrs ago v now. Tbh, the "I got my sound card working" post seems least appropriate of them all (but still ok to do imo, necroposts are good)
    - travisjungroth 5y ago
      My sound card example was supposed to be like your 3rd type, so we agree there. Old and current experiences are definitely both valuable. Just start a new thread. It's too easy for other members to miss the dates when it comes back to the top. Then they're reading and responding to old posts from absent people like they're here and now.
- wott 5y ago
  > boggles my mind to this day - the concept of "necroposting" as something negative. I never understood it either. I mean, as a religion. What is even sillier, is that as far as web forums are concerned, you have 50% of them which will go mad if you "necropost", and the other 50% which will go mad if you open a new thread when there is already an existing thread on the same topic (even buried), because these have the exact opposite written or unwritten rule. The latter ones love their 800 pages long topics; the former ones forbid you to follow up with a discussion even when it is the exact same topic, if the discussion stopped for a while.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    You know what beats that still? I've been using a few boards where people believed in both these things at the same time. So when a topic stalled, it was nigh-impossible to resume it later.
    - wott 5y ago
      Ah! :) I've seen something a bit like that: moderators who would come down hard on people who ask a question, both in an old thread or a new one (because the first time they were told not to create new threads or not to necropost so they tried again, following the advice, in the opposite manner), by telling them "why can't you search the fucking forum 2 minutes before digging an old thread / creating a new thread, stupid; this has been answered multiple times: here, here and here; topic locked", and of course none of the links he gives does answer the specific problem the posters had and clearly specified, because the mod didn't spend the said 2 minutes reading the posters' questions and just stupidly copied the first search results in the rush he had to punish the intruders. So, when you hit the same problems as the posters, you are out of luck, because their questions were not answered before, and they will never be.
      - kergonath 5y ago
        I have seen this unfortunate behaviour in mailing lists for some Open Source software as well. Gatekeepers with anger issues and too much time on their hand (but not enough to actually answer the question). Sometimes I wish these people realised how hostile they are and unwelcoming to new users and potential contributors, but maybe that’s the point. The result is ~10 relevant hits when you Google an error message with not a single useful solution.
- twic 5y ago
  There's at least one forum out there where necroposting is actually valued by the culture. It's considered cool and fun to make a relevant post on a thread that was last updated five years ago. I love that.
  - smeyer 5y ago
    Which forum?
- alpaca128 5y ago
  For me the reason I see it mostly as something negative is because most necroposts are pointless. They're often only written because the author forgot to check the date and thus didn't realise their comment won't contribute anything useful. Like when a user tells others in a 7 years old, obsolete thread they're wrong because shiny new solution XYZ exists.
  - lucideer 5y ago
    but that's just a reasonable response to a specific type of comment, not a general defense of banning necroposts outright. The reason the term exists is because it's a blanket rule based on the age of the reply, not based on the intent or context.
    - chc 5y ago
      The blanket rule is because even "good" necroposts tend to encourage bad ones. If I'm on an active forum and I revive some ancient discussion with a useful comment, lots of people will click on the thread and try to argue with the old posts. The generally recommended alternative is to make a new thread and simply link to the old one so you don't confuse people.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    > the author forgot to check the date and thus didn't realise their comment won't contribute anything useful I have a different view of those in most cases - particularly on large, or publicly accessible, boards. That comment may not contribute anything useful for the people previously involved, but it may very well be useful for everyone else - such as any person that finds the thread through a search engine. > Like when a user tells others in a 7 years old, obsolete thread they're wrong because shiny new solution XYZ exists. That's a specific case about one-upping someone much later, but a more generalized case - posting modern solution under unresolved problem thread - is very valuable for people who find the thread looking for a solution. Conversely, blanket ban on "necroposting" discourages accumulation of knowledge on tough problems. See also: https://xkcd.com/979/ https://xkcd.com/979/
- detaro 5y ago
  If the old context is useful, sure. but it often isn't, and that's what causes people to dislike necroposting. But without a specific policy/instance in mind discussing this is a bit moot, since everyone has a different level of reasonableness in mind.
strogonoff 5y ago
I don’t think “necroposting” is something inherently bad[0], but specifically insisting (or expecting) that open-source project maintainer remembers a 100-screen thread every time anyone wants to bring it up is IMO ill-mannered. A random person online invests an afternoon to read through a years old issue thread and decides to comment, expecting the maintainer to reply. Meanwhile, maintainer has dozens of such issues, and dozens of frustrated users bringing up each of them every week. Asking the submitter to respect a previously made maintainer’s decision, file a new issue and invest their own time to concisely summarize the status quo seems only fair. In other words, diverting discussion to a new thread is a chance to compress old context into a short summary, like you would squash a Git history—except in this case the old closed issue thread is fully linkable and isn’t going anywhere. [0] That said, it depends on maintainer’s personality. I can see how some could feel losing control and demoralised by ever-evolving difficult-to-track discussions on previously closed issues.
- lucideer 5y ago
  You're right that this behaviour is bad and I know that what you describe happens but it seems like a strawman argument in the context of this discussion. What you describe is about the community respecting foss maintainers; closing tickets is not going to solve this problem.
  - strogonoff 5y ago
    I was responding to the point about comments piling on a closed issue. It is not bad by default, but still there can be valid reasons for maintainers to discourage it. Whether an issue should be closed or should be allowed to be re-opened by the public is not even up to debate as far as I’m concerned, this is up to maintainer’s policy.

I can get behind closing stale issues, to a certain degree, but this practice sound straight-out stupid: Why would you discard the context of a previews discussion?

TeMPOraL 5y ago

At the risk of spinning of a tangent flamewar: this ties into a wider issue that boggles my mind to this day - the concept of "necroposting" as something negative. People will commonly want to eat you alive if you post a new reply under a stale discussion thread, but that reaction feels really dumb. The old context is useful.

travisjungroth 5y ago
Agree for intelligent discourse about a slow-moving topic. Disagree for conversations about personal opinions (most of forums), especially ones with time context. When you post on a three year old thread, everyone else has left the room. That's fine if you want to share how you finally got this old sound card working on a specific OS, lame if there was a lively discussion about working at Lyft versus Uber.
- lucideer 5y ago
  Firstly there's a 3rd type: someone asks for help and you post a suggested solution 3 years later. Extremely useful for all the lurkers who also had the same question and are reading looking for possible solutions. But secondly, even your own counterexample I don't think checks out. If I'm browsing your forum & interested in perspectives on working at Lyft v Uber, I absolutely want to read a recent update and contrast that with what people thought 3 yrs ago v now. Tbh, the "I got my sound card working" post seems least appropriate of them all (but still ok to do imo, necroposts are good)
  - travisjungroth 5y ago
    My sound card example was supposed to be like your 3rd type, so we agree there. Old and current experiences are definitely both valuable. Just start a new thread. It's too easy for other members to miss the dates when it comes back to the top. Then they're reading and responding to old posts from absent people like they're here and now.
wott 5y ago
> boggles my mind to this day - the concept of "necroposting" as something negative. I never understood it either. I mean, as a religion. What is even sillier, is that as far as web forums are concerned, you have 50% of them which will go mad if you "necropost", and the other 50% which will go mad if you open a new thread when there is already an existing thread on the same topic (even buried), because these have the exact opposite written or unwritten rule. The latter ones love their 800 pages long topics; the former ones forbid you to follow up with a discussion even when it is the exact same topic, if the discussion stopped for a while.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  You know what beats that still? I've been using a few boards where people believed in both these things at the same time. So when a topic stalled, it was nigh-impossible to resume it later.
  - wott 5y ago
    Ah! :) I've seen something a bit like that: moderators who would come down hard on people who ask a question, both in an old thread or a new one (because the first time they were told not to create new threads or not to necropost so they tried again, following the advice, in the opposite manner), by telling them "why can't you search the fucking forum 2 minutes before digging an old thread / creating a new thread, stupid; this has been answered multiple times: here, here and here; topic locked", and of course none of the links he gives does answer the specific problem the posters had and clearly specified, because the mod didn't spend the said 2 minutes reading the posters' questions and just stupidly copied the first search results in the rush he had to punish the intruders. So, when you hit the same problems as the posters, you are out of luck, because their questions were not answered before, and they will never be.
    - kergonath 5y ago
      I have seen this unfortunate behaviour in mailing lists for some Open Source software as well. Gatekeepers with anger issues and too much time on their hand (but not enough to actually answer the question). Sometimes I wish these people realised how hostile they are and unwelcoming to new users and potential contributors, but maybe that’s the point. The result is ~10 relevant hits when you Google an error message with not a single useful solution.
twic 5y ago
There's at least one forum out there where necroposting is actually valued by the culture. It's considered cool and fun to make a relevant post on a thread that was last updated five years ago. I love that.
- smeyer 5y ago
  Which forum?
alpaca128 5y ago
For me the reason I see it mostly as something negative is because most necroposts are pointless. They're often only written because the author forgot to check the date and thus didn't realise their comment won't contribute anything useful. Like when a user tells others in a 7 years old, obsolete thread they're wrong because shiny new solution XYZ exists.
- lucideer 5y ago
  but that's just a reasonable response to a specific type of comment, not a general defense of banning necroposts outright. The reason the term exists is because it's a blanket rule based on the age of the reply, not based on the intent or context.
  - chc 5y ago
    The blanket rule is because even "good" necroposts tend to encourage bad ones. If I'm on an active forum and I revive some ancient discussion with a useful comment, lots of people will click on the thread and try to argue with the old posts. The generally recommended alternative is to make a new thread and simply link to the old one so you don't confuse people.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > the author forgot to check the date and thus didn't realise their comment won't contribute anything useful I have a different view of those in most cases - particularly on large, or publicly accessible, boards. That comment may not contribute anything useful for the people previously involved, but it may very well be useful for everyone else - such as any person that finds the thread through a search engine. > Like when a user tells others in a 7 years old, obsolete thread they're wrong because shiny new solution XYZ exists. That's a specific case about one-upping someone much later, but a more generalized case - posting modern solution under unresolved problem thread - is very valuable for people who find the thread looking for a solution. Conversely, blanket ban on "necroposting" discourages accumulation of knowledge on tough problems. See also: https://xkcd.com/979/ https://xkcd.com/979/
detaro 5y ago
If the old context is useful, sure. but it often isn't, and that's what causes people to dislike necroposting. But without a specific policy/instance in mind discussing this is a bit moot, since everyone has a different level of reasonableness in mind.

strogonoff 5y ago

I don’t think “necroposting” is something inherently bad[0], but specifically insisting (or expecting) that open-source project maintainer remembers a 100-screen thread every time anyone wants to bring it up is IMO ill-mannered. A random person online invests an afternoon to read through a years old issue thread and decides to comment, expecting the maintainer to reply. Meanwhile, maintainer has dozens of such issues, and dozens of frustrated users bringing up each of them every week. Asking the submitter to respect a previously made maintainer’s decision, file a new issue and invest their own time to concisely summarize the status quo seems only fair. In other words, diverting discussion to a new thread is a chance to compress old context into a short summary, like you would squash a Git history—except in this case the old closed issue thread is fully linkable and isn’t going anywhere. [0] That said, it depends on maintainer’s personality. I can see how some could feel losing control and demoralised by ever-evolving difficult-to-track discussions on previously closed issues.

lucideer 5y ago
You're right that this behaviour is bad and I know that what you describe happens but it seems like a strawman argument in the context of this discussion. What you describe is about the community respecting foss maintainers; closing tickets is not going to solve this problem.
- strogonoff 5y ago
  I was responding to the point about comments piling on a closed issue. It is not bad by default, but still there can be valid reasons for maintainers to discourage it. Whether an issue should be closed or should be allowed to be re-opened by the public is not even up to debate as far as I’m concerned, this is up to maintainer’s policy.