Gravedigging?

I keep seeing threads that have been dormant for five years suddenly reactivated. One actually acknowledged the age of the thread, so I guess it’s not down to excessive tidying up by some maniacal moderator, but it seems a bit odd.

Is it something to do with the new year?

links?

I’ve noticed a lot of them too.

Not that I mind: there’s a conflict between the “rule” not to gravedig and the “rule” not to start new threads on existing topics.

One example is the thread about differences between Taiwan now and Taiwan 10 years ago (a thread which itself was started 6 years ago).

I wouldn’t say that there’s a conflict, as long as you understand the nature of the rule against grave-digging. The rule is not to prevent posting in old threads, but rather to prevent people from digging up an old thread for no good reason.

The rule states:

“Gravedigging is spam. Replying to old topics is spam if you have nothing substantial to add to the topic and are just doing it to bring the topic back up to the top. .”

In other words, there’s nothing wrong with searching for the most relevant thread in which to post, when you have interesting substantive comment or information.

Does simply appending a new message, containing only the word “bump”, to a long dormant thread constitute gravedigging? I would suspect it does, but others may differ.

Admins and mods do that for technical reasons, which we could explain if needed, but if regular posters do it for no apparent reason, then I’d agree with you that it does.
On the other hand, if there has been a question, such as “where can I find a lumberyard?”, which has not received any answers, and a poster wants to ask the same question or wants to bring the question back to attention to remind people that the info is still needed, that’s not exactly ‘for no reason’.

Yes, but I think a blind eye can be turned to bumps in the events forum. In other forums, if an OP requires a response to a query that has gone unanswered, I think that’s probably ok as well.

[Book Publisher / Literary Agent Needed
[Easiest Place to find a teaching job
[Changes in past 10 years
[Fiddle, Bluegrass and Old-Timey Music in Taiwan

Everything seems to be ‘in order’, I just thought it a bit odd.

bump

in the night

occasionally a search turns up some really old threads, and i admit that i have bumped a couple to get them read again, as they were full of humour or observations that have not dated, and obviously struck some people as interesting going by the fact that they prompted at least 30 replies.

pointless gravedigging is to be avoided, obviously, but as pointed out above, there is a conflict with the two main rules about reviving old and starting new threads.

is it annoying that people can reread what someone wrote five years ago? i mean, i could search for all posts by X user and simply start at the beginning, but that would be wrong: that’s internet stalking.

i think the rule should be there so it can be used to stop people harping on and on about something that everyone else wants left alone. but as maoman says, if it’s sensibly done, it’s not a problem, is it?

Yep, that’s exactly the idea :slight_smile: