Just an idea for a "plugin" or "mod" for discussion forums that I think that could be particularly interesting for technical forums. As I'm not a programmer and I have no better idea to where to post such idea, here goes it. Hopefully sufficient people would think that it's a good idea, and it eventually reaches someone who can actually code it, then it is eventually implemented all around.

More than once that I've found something relevant to what I was looking for in a post to which someone complained about "necromancy".

If this option was more widespread over such technical forums, I bet that people would find answers more quickly, as the answers would also be re-posted in more places.

Well, at least assuming that it would be more common to people to add the answer they've found somewhere on the sufficiently related topics (but old) on which there was no solution. Not that they would go around hunting for these topics to post the solution they've found, but I think it's common to find two or three other threads on which no solution was found before eventually finding a solution somewhere. And then, the next time someone searches about the same issue or something significantly similar, the odds of finding the answer are a bit better. And so on.

In the actual situation, in the other hand, if you've found the solution for something, but also have found other threads on which there was no solution, you think twice before commenting on these because some anti-"necromancy"-nazi may #@$#@$ about bumping a thread from the last semester or something. Then the solution does not become anymore easy to find for the next one who is looking for it. Ok, one can say that "but you've been able to find the thread/forum with the solution, so will be the next person", but it still persists that on average people would tend to take longer to find the answers anyway, if they are not as common as they could be.

And lives are made of time. If you take the time that thousands of people took to find hundreds of different issues on forums, it could add up to the amount of time of an entire life. A life that was lost. That's what anti-necromancy nazis do. They KILL people. A few minutes at a time.


And probably kittens too.

As Feynman said "What do you care what other people think"?
Just post and ignore the "old thread" or "necromancy" comments. People search this site for solutions, they don't care if somebody posed the question yesterday or a year ago.

1 members found this post helpful.

I agree - go ahead and post solutions, because that could help many more people than it annoys.

I'd just draw the line at things like asking the original poster for more information. It's only worth addressing future readers not someone who may have forgotten the issue or even not be here any more.

1 members found this post helpful.

I hadn't noticed this specifically on this forum, it's just a thing that happens in forums in general. Sometimes someone will even come and lock the thread. It's nice if "necromancy" is somewhat welcome here.

Still, that would be an interesting feature.

You could report the offensive post. In general, this happens less on LQ.org if a post is really useful to the topic on discussion, but obviously some people will always feel the need to poke in with their snide remarks. Do report such posts to moderators.

1 members found this post helpful.

If you feel that you have something relevant to add to an old thread,
a better way to do it, IMO, is by starting your post with the statement:

I know the thread is old, but I feel the following information is relevant
and may help someone else too, so...

As an example see this thread:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-so-0-a-91513/
Look at all the dates there.

One main reason for snide remarks may be that people assume that you
have posted there without seeing the thread's date.

4 members found this post helpful.