Locking old threads

Yes, I know, a hoary old chestnut. Seems worse this time of year (every year).
Principally newbies resurrecting old (and I mean old) threads. jeremy can't you lock just them after 3 years (or so) say. They can always be referred to in need in a new thread. Even zombies need to be left in peace.

Hi there,

Originally Posted by syg00 jeremy can't you lock just them after 3 years (or so) say. They can always be referred to in need in a new thread. Even zombies need to be left in peace.

I second that idea, and I think 3 years is even much too long a period. 3 months would be more appropriate in my view.
There are other forums where threads are automatically archived and closed after about 2 weeks of inactivity.

[X] Doc CPU

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...2/#post2191294 - ironically, the thread I just linked to had a response in 2006 and then someone resurrected it in 2009! Jeremy has always been against locking old threads in case they are still relevant and someone may have an issue which does follow on directly from the existing responses.

Anyway, old threads have the quick reply box disabled and a message to ask if they really really want to resurrect the thread which they have to get past to post a response. The moral of the story is: if someone has a real hankering to post, they will regardless of any measures we put in place.

Wasn't aware of that - hmmm. Makes them determined buggers then.
I shall desist from berating them in future - obviously a waste of time.

I've been wondering about this. The LQ rules don't seem to mention it.

There is a July 2010 thread in which I posted a response to the help request. Surprisingly someone gave me rep for that post two weeks ago. After reviewing my post, I was horrified and considered posting a better solution. I'd rather not do so if it would be a breach of etiquette.

Is it the consensus among LQ-ers that old threads should stay dead? If there are exceptions then what are they?

If you have a better solution, by all means post it - put in the reason that you have resurrected the thread, of course. Necroposting gets a bad rep because most of the time the poster has clearly not read the thread and wants someone to hold their hand through a fix, rather than reading the post and requesting a clarification.

In your case, you are trying to improve on the answer and that is a good thing(tm).

Hmmm ...
Relevance is my criteria.

I recently got kicked by a thread I didn't even remember I was subscribed to. Over 5 years old. Query was how to restore an XP MBR (boot code actually, but never mind that ...) after a Linux install gone (or gone bad).
New, first time poster, decided to resurrect the thread and advised on how to use EasyBCD to fix things.
In XP ...
Well d'oh.

All new and shiny (the poster that is) and trying to help, but totally off-base re the original query. Better it never happened.

We tend to tell people to search before making a post to see if the question has been answered. This will often lead to an old thread, so it can be good if a new solution is added.

Sometimes, only old information is available. For example, ZevenOS uses Sawfish instead of Xfwm. If you have a problem with it, ZevenOS doesn't have a lot of English-speaking users and no-one else has used Sawfish since Gnome switched to Metacity.

Admittedly, additions may be completely irrelevant, but so are many replies to new posts.