All new users please read this post

Community Blog
,
1

Been getting a lot of necro’s in the last few days, so new users, let me introduce you to the forum’s interface.

Here we have the basic thing. You can organize by hitting the filters on the top.

Here we have a post. When you use the search to find a topic that is interesting, please pay attention to these areas here:

With that, at the bottom of the page theres this list.

Please for the love of fuck look at this bar and note when the thread was last active.

“But why can’t I bring up old topics?”

Well for one, this is an annoyance to the users who have been here for a while since Level1 is whats left of Tek Syndicate. The two groups split apart last year and went their separate ways, as did the forum users. With that, a lot of those old topics… Those users aren’t even around anymore. At that, the technology could change in such a massive way that theres not much left to talk about in the thread or it isn’t even relevant anymore.

“But I…”

Threads die for a reason. Its how forums work. If you want to necro a thread, think about if you just want to bring up the topic again. For example, lets go to this thread here:

Now, using the above information that I showed you, lets practice this very simple thing of Identifying Times.

July 2016. Over a year. The general rule of etiquette on this forum is, unless its a project post that YOU created, 4 months is the death nell. No more than that unless something big comes up. Example being the AMDGPU Info / News Thread. Just search it. I started it to track AMDGPU as it was released and integrated with the kernel more and more. Because of what it is, no one really cares if it gets necroed if the information applied is valid. Its like a wiki. The context is important.

Also, threads get locked.

If you want to continue the discussion in a new light, highlight whatever thing interested you and you get a quote button.

Hit the button, get a text box

You can now continue the discussion without being a tit. If you’re about to necro a thread, you can also quote the text in that thread, start a new thread, and apply that quote in your new thread.

Now then, hopefully we don’t have to have this discussion again. :slight_smile:

9 Likes
2

Someone once suggested a confirmation prompt when replying to posts more than a couple months old. Write one and submit to @kreestuh her bounty is abstinence from t-bagging for 2 weeks.

2 Likes
3

We just need a permanent sticky for new users that they HAVE TO READ before they get the members tag.

4

Mandatory reading may help.

Although I sometimes get suckered into necro by the suggestions at the bottom of the screen.

2 Likes
5

Im with you on user accountability but discourse is a drastic change for some people.

Also if you go into the sub catagories it is easy to travel very far back in time.

2 Likes
6

Honestly it’d just be a hella lot easier to only allow people with Regular status or higher to post to a thread that is more than 6 months old.

Seriously I’m getting sick of these necros, I might just make a discourse plugin for L1.

2 Likes
7

Please do ugh

8

@MisteryAngel perhaps this is something we can add to the rules pinned thread?

9

Burying something in the rules is the best way for making sure nobody reads it

2 Likes
10

Screenshot from 2017-09-21 11-27-08
Screenshot from 2017-09-21 11-27-08.png1581x292 37.9 KB

I’m not sure if this shows up for others, but when I try to respond to an old post, it gives me this message. I wonder if we can edit that message to include something that says it’s against forum policy to revive old threads.

2 Likes
11

My instincts tell me if you ‘say’ something isn’t allowed and leave a button right there that in fact does allow people do make an infraction then they will either get a mixed signal, or as the recent Hello Internet podcast suggests, will feel a call to do what they are being asked not to do.

Basically if you leave it as a possible option then it is certainly going to happen. I would agree with above how the drastically different format here is not something people will intuitively pick up if they are used to older formats. I’m still getting used to things here. Perhaps if it isn’t easy to eliminate a banned option, then adding more, larger text in contrasting color, or somehow making it require approval before being revived. It’s either put in work to make it happen or just deal with the necromancy.

1 Like
12

I just don’t have a complete solution for how we can solve this issue.

I don’t have a huge problem one way or another with necromancy, in fact, I support it in my personal life, but on the forum, it can be an annoyance.

:confused:

2 Likes
13

Agreed. The only thing I would change is when it shows the number of days since last post, I would double the font size and make it bright red instead of dark blue. I’ve gotten better at catching it and disregarding the necro, but have caught myself on more than one occasion writing a post and only realizing it was a wasted effort on a necro when proofreading.

4 Likes
14

We should have a day of necro.
Like the purge, we need to fulfill that part of our nature so that the rest of the year will be free of necromancy

Or something like that

2 Likes
15

That message pops up for me as well, but I don’t recall it popping up on mobile.

1 Like
16

Halloween.

3 Likes
17

Kind of like Imgurs “update anything from usersub” day.

1 Like
18

We should have a pinned thread each month with polls for best and worst necros.

2 Likes
19

What about manual approval by the OP for a user’s reply to show up on a ‘necro’ thread? Maybe allow OPs to lock threads they post? Or even auto-locking threads after a period of inactivity requiring OP approval to unlock?
Just throwing stuff out there, they would probably be pretty hard to implement permissions-wise.
Totally agree with @SudoSaibot about the confirmation button, would probably be the simpler solution.

20

Only leader trust level users have thread control, this would also put then responsibility on OP and not every user is active enough to keep track of their own threads