So, so far someone has resurrected topics such as this one from 2011, this one from 2017, and this one from 2012, and its absolutely ridiculous. This isn't entitlement or being rude, or even wining; this is common sense. In fact, most mainstream forums that I've seen either automatically lock the topic after a certain period of time so it can't be updated or ban those who bump topics for a reason that can't easily be justified. As an example of how frustrating and ridiculous this is, take a metaphorical news sight that lets people post and update news articles but doesn't let them delete them and doesn't auto-lock them. People can post comments on any news article but the posting brings the article to the top as though it were "new". Let's say that this site has been around since 2001. Someone (who I won't bother coming up with a name for) brings an article back to the top by commenting on it, and said article just so happens to be from 2002 (and this is 2019). That's a bit ridiculous, isn't it, since this metaphorical news sight just might have a forum? Just because the question you want to ask (or the thing you want to post about) is related to a topic that was posted in 2012, 2011, or even 2017 is no excuse to bring that topic all the way back to the top and make it look new or "recently updated". Its a lot better to post a new topic. I see absolutely no reason whatsoever to resurrect a topic that's older than a year or two just to ask a question or to 'give an update'. If I'm not mistaken, even Reddit locks topics after their 360 days old. Think about it: you open the forum one day to see what's new only to find a topic that seems 'new' because the forum shoves it *all the way* to the top (and humans can't keep track of all topics in the forum ever). You open it, check the date of the first post and realize its from 2009. How do you feel? I'll tell you how I feel -- pissed off. If a topic creation date is from 2009-2010, or is older than two years (at most) it should be against the forum rules to be resurrected, period. I don't want to go about making a warning system and all that; I'll leave that up to either the community or the admins, but seriously, this is ridiculous. An exception though should be made for both the introductions topic and the site restrictions thing, but nothing else.
The thing is, resurrecting a topic is not easy. It requires one of three things to happen:
1) the person resurrecting the topic deliberately hunts for it, going as far back as needed, until they find it, and post on it.
2) the person accidentally finds it in a google or forum search result (which usually requires explicit search keywords).
3) the user somehow has managed to get their browser to never delete history items and manages to dig it up in the multitude of ones they've generated since then (and was either the one who created the topic or was around when the topic was posted).
I really hope something is done about this and am quite surprised this hasn't been thought about until now.
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