Threads need an answer before they close, regardless of how old the Q is.
Does G2G have a policy on 'Necro-posting'?
If, because of site policy, warnings are issued for posting on threads more than 3 months old, a question may never get answered even if someone knows the answer.
An extreme example of this is the 'voting best answer' which happens on Yahoo Answers, where a wrong answer can be voted best answer!
The reason this is interesting and potentially worrying is that a similar thing is going on with (eg) Newton's First Law on Wikipedia - the laws of maths, physics etc are being decided by general consensus of opinion. That is very democratic but it's not right, is it?

Your thoughts are welcome on this.

psic88

Hello the chemist

Welcome to G2G! My name is Oreo Collas.

I apologise about the edit, but I posted some incorect information. As far as I know G2G does not have a policy on dead threads, however I would try to keep it to a minimum. This site could easily get over crouded with dead threads floating around. Please carefully re-read the Terms of Use that you agreed to when you joined and that will answer your question.

This post has been edited by Oreo Collas: Apr 13 2009, 03:00 PM

I'm not sure how the TOU applies here - it doesn't address answering old threads. The chemist, we don't typically close threads once they're resolved, except in the malware forum. This is partly because the nature of the forum allows anyone to post in the other forums, which means that sometimes a regular member will help another member, but then has no means to close the thread. That would leave it up to a mod or admin to check every thread and see if a resolution has been reached, and that's just not going to happen - there are too many threads to do that.

The real problem with replying to a lot of old threads is that the original poster will probably never see it, so we won't know if the posted fix is really correct anyway. Just because someone posts a fix 3, 4, or even 12 months later does not mean the thread is resolved. It's only truly resolved if the original poster tells us that the problem is fixed due to the posted fix.

I'm not sure where your Wikipedia example fits? Newton's First Law of Physics is not something to be resolved by a democratic vote, which demonstrates the downside to Wikipedia - a very good reason to not cite a Wikipedia entry as a definitive answer to anything. However, since we don't vote on answers on this forum, and we're not likely to in the foreseeable future, I fail to see the comparison between us, Yahoo, and Wikipedia.

the biggest issue with "necro-posting" isn't when someone posts advice to a "dead thread" it's when someone finds a thread that's 2 years old that matches a problem they're having and they decide to post there instead of starting their own thread.... we don't issue warnings for someone posting valid advice to an old thread (we will post a warning to someone who posts questionable responses to an old thread...but that's usually along the lines of "why in the world would you revive a 3 year old thread to say something so stupid?")

To irritate the Admins....

we're irritable enough as it

True - you really don't want to mess with us. We might choose to make an example of you.

Exactly! That's why I don't bother you guys

But on other forums...

Irritable moderators?
Surely not, at least here on our happy friendly g2g site!

I'm glad to hear g2g doesn't have a specific policy on Necro-posting.
Some of my happiest hours are spent browsing historical threads, not
to mention all the miscellaneous gems of info that come up in a search.

I started this discussion because it seemed to me that having good and
accurate answers to Q's was more important than tidying up loose ends.
If I post a Q and no answer is immediately forthcoming, although I will
look elsewhere, I still eagerly await the trill of my New Emails notifier, in
the hope that someone else has picked up on what I wrote.

The relevance of Wikipedia (to which I am making NO direct comparison
re g2g, the latter being infinitely less contentious and troubled) is that for
editorial purposes (ie. to get something agreed upon for the text and layout
of an item) different factions on the discussion forums were prepared to
compromise over the actual wording and interpretation of Newton's Laws
of motion. And they argue with vim and vigour, and with passion, and revert
each other and kind of lose the plot. Actual facts seem largely irrelevant.
The truth takes a backseat.

Yahoo Answers, once again no match for g2g, has a policy of voting the best
answer after an arbitrary lapsed time. I asked a question


Why are there over a thousand items in my startup group since I downloaded pcguard?
Formatted the HD, installed XP and then SP2, then VirginMedia's PCGuard. Then looked in help and support - tools - my computer information - view a list of microsoft software installed on this computer - and after 2-3 mins delay a list of applications and dll's came up which was longer than my arm and all yours as well!
Does anyone else have this problem? Is it just pcguard that does this?
I'd be grateful for any info on this.
7 months ago
Additional Details
VirginMedia is a reputable company so far as I am aware.
7 months ago


Best Answer - Chosen by Voters
sounds like Pc gaurd is one of those non-reputable spyware sweepers that puts a pop up window and tells you your so infected till you install their software IE you gave them your credit card number and now all their marketing crap is on your machine
7 months ago

Once again, in the interests of editorial tidyness, truth takes a back seat.
PCGuard is (as I'm sure you're aware) a bona fide product of a reputable company.
Having said that, Virginmedia do not go out of thier way to point out that PCGuard
was designed for dualcore systems and is too greedy for the resources of one processor.

On a humorous note, I posted another Q (immediately I found this Q had been voted on) which was
When Is The Answer Not The Answer?

I posted on another tech site the other day and was dismayed to be warned for
Necro-posting. The post was about a year and a half old, but was still live, and
obviously germane to something I knew or thought. I was told that this
Necro-posting rule was common on forums and I thought, that doesn't sound like
g2g or most of the other forums I look at or post on.

The point of this encyclopaedic post is that this site is very well run and policy
is fine without rules on anything like 'Necro-posting', and we don't have to look far
to see the error of other ways.

Truth and reality cannot be sacrificed on the altar of editorial expediency.
I'm not advocating changes, more of a look at the way it goes wrong on other sites, sometimes.
What do you think?

psic88

Some times a little common sense is expected so a rule is not made.
Common sense tells me that a post from 18 months ago has been resolved or a new machine purchased, after all who would wait for so long to fix their computer?

Some problems aren't catastrophic, so can wait years for an answer.
If a question has no answer posted, it is no help to anyone, rather
muddying the water of a search and causing fruitless hits on a topic.
If a site is to optimise its utility to its members and to the general
public, every question should have an answer.

Even if I had sold the pc and bought a new one I would still be interested
in the answer. The idea that my Q could be discarded without an answer
is most distressing. I suppose some people might post Q's and not bother
to post an answer (if it came from another source), but I don't think those
sort of people are likely to be members of g2g.

As far as g2g is concerned, this is all academic, obviously, as common
sense is in good shape around here. I'm not implying any criticism of
g2g nor the way it is run.

Philosophically, there are serious problems inherent in the way some
other sites are regulated, regarding the nature of truth and reality.

Regards,

psic88

@ the chemist

You raise some interesting points. I agree to a certain extent that if a question is presented and if an answer is indeed found or readily available (irrespective of the time frame), out of courtesy the answer should be posted. However, if it is reasonable to believe that the original member who asked the question is not likely to return then the answer could be posted in a manner that appears to be offering assistance to the forum community as a whole, as demonstrated in the example below.


This is of course my own opinion and I am in no way inferring that this is or should be the policy here at G2G.

*dsenette kicks octagonal in the shins for necroposting in a topic about necroposting

Don't kick too hard or I may really be necroing from the other side.

PMS

That is all.
XD