Old Thread/Necro-Bumping Rule Seems Counter-Productive to Me

cb474 · 2010-02-05 05:19:47

I recently posted in the following two threads and caused one of the to get closed, due to the old thread rule (which I only just learned of).

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=59469
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=39871

I'm a little perplexed why the thread whose last post was three months ago was closed, but not the thread that hadn't had a post for two years (and in which the moderator wrote his own reply). I don't really see the logic of how the rule is being applied there.

But more importantly, I really don't exactly understand the value of the rule. I was doing a search on a problem I had and these threads were the two most obvious and relevant threads, which came up right away. When I figured out my solution and it wasn't in the threads, it seemed relevant to post my information in the threads for other users. These are the threads that turn up right away in a search and have relevant titles, so regardless of age other users with a similar problem are going to likely come upon these threads first too.

If I started a new thread instead, just to offer my suggestions, and then linked to the other threads, as the forum etiquette rule suggests, that to me would make for a much more cluttered forum (counter to the stated purpose of the rule). I hate it when I have to slog through a zillion half relevant threads. That to me is far more "disjointed" (again the stated problem the old thread rule is attempting to address). Not all old threads, especially ones only 6 months old, are irrelevant. I find useful information in pretty old threads all the time. And if the information I have to add addresses the exact same error that someone else saw, without finding a solution, why is it "disjointed" and not "tidy," as the etiquette wiki calls it, to post my suggestion there?

I guess I just don't get it. To me the rule seems to encourage having as many different slightly divirgent threads on the same topic as possible, which is far more of a source of not keeping the forum "tidy" and creating "disjointed" information.

Just my thoughts.

Last edited by cb474 (2010-02-05 05:40:26)

Snowman · 2010-02-05 06:25:39

Probably the moderator didn't noticed the date. I've closed it, btw. It's better to start a new thread than post in a 1+ year old thread. In one year a lot of things can change like packages version. So the current problem could be totally unrelated to the initial post. As for posting solutions in old threads, well, either the initial poster found the solution by himself or by other means or he switched distro, etc. Users can start new threads if they have problems. If your solution is something generic that might go in the wiki, then it would be better to put it there.

cb474 · 2010-02-05 07:16:45

Snowman wrote:

As for posting solutions in old threads, well, either the initial poster found the solution by himself or by other means or he switched distro, etc. Users can start new threads if they have problems. If your solution is something generic that might go in the wiki, then it would be better to put it there.

I guess it just doesn't make sense to me to treat threads a purely for the purpose of solving the OP's original problem (and it is patently obvious in actual pratice that at least half the time they're not treated this way by other posters). A thread is also a repository of useful information about a particular topic.

But there is plenty of an inbetween area before it might make sense to put something in the wiki. Should I really put that a certain error code might be due to inadvertently entering "hal" twice in the DAEMONS section of rc.conf (as was my case in the threads in question)? That doesn't seem like wiki worthy information, although it certainly could be useful to someone else who didn't realize they'd done the same thing. Should I really start a new thread just to say, oh by the way...?

Also, often I discover a solution to something, but I really don't know enough about it (I'm not a developer or programmer) to feel confident putting it in the wiki. I think there's a ton of potentially useful information out there like that. Should that go in a new thread every time, rather than appended to an old thread on the same topic? I still think this leads to an un-"tidy" and "disjointed" forum more than anything. That's my experience from years of using many different forums.

Misfit138 · 2010-02-05 15:07:00

That was my mistake to post in a thread that was from 3 years ago (after you had necro-bumped it ).

There's the way that it should be, and then there's the way it is.
It should be that members post clear, concise messages with logs and output, and eventually solve their issue on their own, or with assistance from fellow forum members, and that the method and procedure of solution be clearly spelled out. Threads should be flowing and succinct, but detailed, and also remain reasonably short. Rarely should they be multiple pages. Finally, the thread should be marked as [solved].
All too often, the forum rules are ignored; the OP solves his issue without posting his solution(s), or the OP fails to give Arch any more time and abandons the forum altogether, or other members promise to "get back" to others when they have a chance and never do, the thread goes on for post after post or page after page, is necro-bumped, or some other scenario which creates "disjointed" and useless data.
Necro-bumping threads only further exacerbates the situation. e.g.: Is the OP even a part of the community any longer? Are we talking about dhcpcd 1.5.1 or 1.4.x?
Threads from the past are invariably dealing with packages and Arch systems from several versions ago, since Arch is a rolling release. Note that other distros confront this issue in different ways. e.g.: Centos has a 5.4 forum, a 5.3 forum, etc.
The rule is in place to keep all threads as current as possible, to coincide with the current status of Arch as a distribution.
Linking to the older thread is always preferred, if the older thread is still relevant.

Xyne · 2010-02-05 15:40:54

Misfit138 wrote:

That was my mistake to post in a thread that was from 3 years ago (after you had necro-bumped it ).

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … 01#p665801

I partially agree with both sides of this discussion. There have been a few threads that were effectively timeless yet which were closed simply because someone cried zombie and killed it. At the same time, the longer a thread gets, the less useful it becomes as nonsensical posts pile up and you have to search a growing number of pages to find what you're looking for, even if the topic is generic enough to remain relevant for a long time.

Ultimately the forum is not ideally suited to such topics. It would be much more useful if we had nested threads and some type of voting system to flag solutions and other useful posts, with a way of tagging and hiding posts for targeted searches. It would basically be something between Slashdot and Stack Overflow.

Before someone chants the "submit a patch or gtfo" mantra, I'm just thinking out loud, not making a feature request.

cb474 · 2010-02-06 04:52:14

Misfit138 wrote:

There's the way that it should be, and then there's the way it is.

I guess I feel like what I'm talking about is how things actually are in practice and not how it should ideally be. From my perspective the necro-bumping rule is on the side of how things ideally should be, but fails in practice. Ideally the necro-bumping rule addresses a problem of disjointedness in the forum and solves it. In practice the necro-bumping rule overstates the problem and leads to greater disjointedness.

I understand (obviously as an Arch user) that Arch is a rolling release with constantly new packages. But my experience (in actual practice) is that a awful lot of information just is not irrelevant after a year or two, let alone as little as six months. Everything in Arch, and Linux more generally, is just not that new and constantly changing. And new versions of the same packages often have the same errors and problems as older versions. I just don't buy the argument that these olds posts become irrelevant so fast, because of the nature of Arch as a rolling release. I'm more of an end user though, so perhaps for more sophisticated users their exeperience is different.

I also honestly find having many different threads on the same topic far more disjointed than having to go through a long thread. I like having it all in one place and find the long thread useful (until it gets to maybe more than twenty or thirty pages, but that is usually not the case). At least, that's how I see, perhaps others prefer the disjointedness of many different posts. But I know in practice this often makes it really hard for me to find relevant information when searching. It may be there, but it's spread across a lot of threads, with more and less useful subject headings.

And so ultimately, even if I accept the premise that necro-bumping leads to disjointedness and long threads that have some irrelevant information in them, due to referring to old packages, I still don't see the outcome that we get with many different threads all over the place every time someone has the same problem as better. From my perspective, at best, the necro-bumping rule addresses a real problem and completely fails to solve it, only creating a different problem of disjointedness. That's at best. At worst, it overstates a problem and comes up with a solution that's worse. That's what I see happening in actual practice.

jasonwryan · 2010-02-06 05:48:32

cb474 wrote:

At worst, it overstates a problem and comes up with a solution that's worse. That's what I see happening in actual practice.

Both the practice of posting,in this case to older threads, and the application of the forum rules are ultimately subject to the judgement of the users (and the Mods).

For mine, the necrobumping rule is a sound one - it frames an expectation that users post current information pertaining to the software that is in circulation at the time of the post. Similarly, it gives Mods the latitude to close threads where the addition of further information (whether it be questions, observations or whatever) is potentially misleading.

The reality, of course, is that this isn't a perfect system, but what I have observed here is that when there is a genuine issue that would benefit the community, all of the Mods are open to discussing the matter and arriving at a solution that works best for all of us. If you disagree with a call, you are free to take issue with it safe in the knowledge that, if you are right, you will likely prevail...

.:B:. · 2010-02-06 13:45:12

You could also look at it in another way: don't bump old topics, and they don't have to get closed. Less work for us .

The reasoning behind this rule is a very sound one, and as such it's unlikely to change.

cb474 · 2010-02-07 01:54:10

.:B:. wrote:

The reasoning behind this rule is a very sound one, and as such it's unlikely to change.

The reasoning may have been sound when it was thought up, but in actual practice it is not sound, for the reasons I've already detailed at length.

And anyway, given that I obviously disagree, I don't really see how telling me that the reasoning is "sound" (without any explanation whatsoever) is going to presuade me. It's just an assertation and not reasoning at all.

But I accept that no one sees this the way I do. So I'll just try to work with a rule that I think is counter-productive and poorly thought-out. I certainly in general really like and appreciate these forums and find them very helpful and friendly. I just had a thought about something that I don't think works well. It is clear I have convinced no one.

wankel · 2010-02-07 02:51:54

cb474 wrote:

.:B:. wrote:
The reasoning behind this rule is a very sound one, and as such it's unlikely to change.
The reasoning may have been sound when it was thought up, but in actual practice it is not sound, for the reasons I've already detailed at length.
And anyway, given that I obviously disagree, I don't really see how telling me that the reasoning is "sound" (without any explanation whatsoever) is going to presuade me. It's just an assertation and not reasoning at all.
But I accept that no one sees this the way I do. So I'll just try to work with a rule that I think is counter-productive and poorly thought-out. I certainly in general really like and appreciate these forums and find them very helpful and friendly. I just had a thought about something that I don't think works well. It is clear I have convinced no one.

I agree with you on this one cb474, but unfortunately around here its usually their way or the highway.

Allan · 2010-02-07 02:59:10

The people who came up with that rule are those who have been around for a decent period of time and use the forum heavily. We know the issues (or maybe more accurately, the lack of productiveness) that was caused by posting in really old threads and we find the current method _far_ better.

That is why the issues you have bought up do not convince us. We are weighing them against the much larger issues prevented by the rule.

AlexS · 2010-02-07 08:46:48

To bring the perspective of a new user: I find the no bumping rule extremely helpful to sift information across the forum. Imagine I have a problem with a feature of program X, and that this feature has tripped users for the last 3 years. With thread bumping I'll have to suffer through many pages or irrelevant/obsolete information, jokes, ramblings, etc => an incredible time waster. If the same thread is segmented into chronological separated chunks because of the rule, I can directly start by the most recent one, or by those labeled [solved].

Also, the longer a thread is, the more chances that standards go down the drain: people lose focus, the subject starts drifting, new issues and different circumstances alter and muddle the problem at hand. Plus, people start intervening without having read the whole thread, which leads to pointless repetitions: again a horrible time waster.

As for useful information being lost because of the rule, that is not my experience: usually when information in an old thread becomes relevant in a new one, someone will post a link to it (with some admonition for insufficient search efforts).

cb474 · 2010-02-07 10:09:07

Allan wrote:

The people who came up with that rule are those who have been around for a decent period of time and use the forum heavily. We know the issues (or maybe more accurately, the lack of productiveness) that was caused by posting in really old threads and we find the current method _far_ better.
That is why the issues you have bought up do not convince us. We are weighing them against the much larger issues prevented by the rule.

Can we just agree to disagree? I already said I accept that most others see this differently. So what's the point in chiming in one more time just to tell me I'm wrong. You're just saying you're right without giving any reasons or justification. I don't find that very respectful. I explained my reasons above in detail. I see it differently. I also think I'm looking at the larger picture (in fact, my whole point was about the larger picture). I have spent years around many different Linux and other forums. My opinion is based on a lot of experience too. But obviously at the end of the day it's up to the moderators. So I accept your decision. I respect and appreciate the work you do. I was just giving my two cents. I just don't find it very productive and respectful to have the reponses be to just be told you're right, because you know, and I'm just wrong, and you don't even need to explain yourself. We have a difference of opinion. I offered my suggestion and point of view (in the section that is supposedly for discussing the forum itself). The moderators clearly feel the rule is a good rule. Fine. I accept that decision.

Last edited by cb474 (2010-02-07 12:21:02)

Misfit138 · 2010-02-07 15:09:04

I don't want to exacerbate this situation nor aggravate you personally, but I would like to at least more accurately convey to you my perspective and reasoning. Please lend me a patient ear and try not to misinterpret this as an attack of any sort; it is merely to inform.

Personally, both as a user and a mod, when I am having an issue it would be ideal to do a forum search and be able to prioritize my choices judging by the most recent and relevant results and more importantly, the threads marked as [Solved].
If we all did out part to follow the forum guidelines, the threads in the search results would be succinct, but detailed, and the last post tag would accurately reflect the time frame of the thread.
When the guidelines are ignored, (or not 'enforced'-- and allow me to note here that an unenforced 'rule' is not a 'rule' at all) the resulting mish-mosh of multi-paged, unsolved/unmarked threads throws a bundle of disjointed data at me with no accurate way of judging the time frame, further protracting my time investment toward finding a solution and requiring me to manually sort through it all.
As a mod, I attribute this to an unfortunate but nonetheless pervasive attitude amongst a forum minority who ignore the forum etiquette and I must finally conclude that if the guidelines had been followed, the search results would be much more comprehensive and relevant.
Now, if I am hearing you right, your response to this was already stated above. Namely:

I guess it just doesn't make sense to me to treat threads a purely for the purpose of solving the OP's original problem (and it is patently obvious in actual pratice that at least half the time they're not treated this way by other posters). A thread is also a repository of useful information about a particular topic.

I hear where you are coming from and respect your insight, but I must try and align my perspective with the ideals that serve the forum and represent Arch as a whole. We are all guilty of being human, and there is always room for appropriate humor and the odd useless post in a spirit of enthusiasm for our distro and community, but the etiquette and mod team must ultimately guide us all away from the slippery slope that leads to idle chit-chat, trolling, nonsense and any other distractions that detract from the effectiveness of the forum.
(It is a GNU/Linux forum after all. )

davidm · 2010-02-07 17:37:05

Perhaps a mod for the forum which works something like the following may be helpful:

The year portion of the post has the color determined as follows:

Current year - Green
Lasy Year - Yellow
Earlier than last year - Red

More logical but a tad harder to implement:

Last 3 months - Green
3 - 6 months - Yellow
6 - 12 months - Orange
12 months and earlier - Red

The purpose being to give an easy and more noticeable clue as to the age of the post making accidental necroposting harder. Newbies could also be cautioned to look at the color of the year and be suspicious of anything not green since it may be out of date.

ngoonee · 2010-02-07 20:43:01

Hmm, some of us are colour-blind, others simply 'stylish' the forums anyway (or use text browsers). In my personal opinion that would just make the whole place ugly.

davidm · 2010-02-07 20:54:46

ngoonee wrote:

Hmm, some of us are colour-blind, others simply 'stylish' the forums anyway (or use text browsers). In my personal opinion that would just make the whole place ugly.

Probably true. Another idea might be to modify the search results and way things are shown to allow it to go by the date when the thread was started rather than by last post, adding this on as an option. This would help with the cited search results issue that is created when a user bumps an old post.

Perhaps another idea is to do something like ubuntuforums does (they use distro and version instead). Add a field in the profile and to each post which specifies:

1. kernel
2. WM/DE
3. Testing Enabled or standard, other info deemed fit.

Example Display:

"2.6.32 / KDE 4.3 / Standard" (probably is enough info to help)

Each time a post is made this information is copied into that post based on the current info within the profile. Unlike ubuntuforums if a user changes these settings it will not retroactively change the displayed fields in the search results. So when one reads a post they can easily see what environment the author had when replying and use some more common sense.

Unfortunately the latter is a little harder and more complicated to code than the former and the ubuntuforums type solution (they do not have this field sticky) because the information is "sticky". So you would not be able to just pull it for display from the profile (since it is stored per post). This might be too complicated and troublesome. Not KISS. The former seems a great idea though?

Last edited by davidm (2010-02-07 21:03:54)

cb474 · 2010-02-08 05:31:03

Misfit138 wrote:

I don't want to exacerbate this situation nor aggravate you personally, but I would like to at least more accurately convey to you my perspective and reasoning. Please lend me a patient ear and try not to misinterpret this as an attack of any sort; it is merely to inform.
Personally, both as a user and a mod, when I am having an issue it would be ideal to do a forum search and be able to prioritize my choices judging by the most recent and relevant results and more importantly, the threads marked as [Solved].
If we all did out part to follow the forum guidelines, the threads in the search results would be succinct, but detailed, and the last post tag would accurately reflect the time frame of the thread.
When the guidelines are ignored, (or not 'enforced'-- and allow me to note here that an unenforced 'rule' is not a 'rule' at all) the resulting mish-mosh of multi-paged, unsolved/unmarked threads throws a bundle of disjointed data at me with no accurate way of judging the time frame, further protracting my time investment toward finding a solution and requiring me to manually sort through it all.
As a mod, I attribute this to an unfortunate but nonetheless pervasive attitude amongst a forum minority who ignore the forum etiquette and I must finally conclude that if the guidelines had been followed, the search results would be much more comprehensive and relevant.
Now, if I am hearing you right, your response to this was already stated above. Namely:
I guess it just doesn't make sense to me to treat threads a purely for the purpose of solving the OP's original problem (and it is patently obvious in actual pratice that at least half the time they're not treated this way by other posters). A thread is also a repository of useful information about a particular topic.
I hear where you are coming from and respect your insight, but I must try and align my perspective with the ideals that serve the forum and represent Arch as a whole. We are all guilty of being human, and there is always room for appropriate humor and the odd useless post in a spirit of enthusiasm for our distro and community, but the etiquette and mod team must ultimately guide us all away from the slippery slope that leads to idle chit-chat, trolling, nonsense and any other distractions that detract from the effectiveness of the forum.
(It is a GNU/Linux forum after all. )

I appreciate your thoughtful, detailed response. I totally get your vision of how the forum could be if the rules of etiquette were followed. It'a a nice vision.

Where I think we differ is that I think some of the rules, in this case the necro-bumping rule, are designed purely in terms of what would be a good way to organize the forum in and of itself and do not take into account, as you acknowledge. that people just don't behave this way. I honestly wonder how many forum users have ever read the rules? I bet it's well below 10%. So I think a good rule needs to not only embody a good organizational structure for the forum, but also take into account the likelihood that it will be followed and the consequences when it is inevitably not followed.

A rule that creates greater disjointedness and confusion, when it's followed sometimes but not always, is not in my opinion an effective rule, nor better than no rule at all. A rule needs to work okay, even when half the people or more aren't following it. I also think it is probably only reasonable to expect a group of people in all their laziness and irrationality to follow two or three basic rules. Beyond that it's noise that people ignore. I'm not justifying this. I just think it's a realisitic picture of what people actually do.

Still, I get that the moderators feel the necro-bumping rule is working good enough or is better than nothing, so although I disagree, I won't try to convince anyone more than I already have.

I do still wonder where my post in the threads that got closed for necro-bumping should go. I realized I was getting a error messages because I had inadvertently place "hal" in the DAEMONS section of rc.conf twice. Both threads that I posted in addressed the error and they were the most obvious ones (based on subject headings) that came up in a search. One thread seemed like it might really have been the same problem, but the OP had abandoned the thread, despite marking it solved, after simply reinstalling arch (does that really count as "solved"?). So I wasn't just adding random digressive comments. I had possibly found the solution he hadn't noticed. If anybody else searched on this error message, they were go to come right away to the same thread. Should I really just start a new thread to say, by the way if you accidentally put "hal" in rc.conf twice you'll get this "..." error message? And then link to the old thread? Isn't that just necro-bumping in disguise? Is there really a place for that in the wiki? It seems to me that the necro-bumping rule fails to anticipate this sort of situation and just breaks down. Indeed almost all rules eventually run up against this sort of problem--that can't anticipate every context to which they might have to be applied. I felt what I did was the most useful and least intrusive way to make this information available to future users who make the same mistake, do a search, and come upon the same threads as I did.

Anyway, I realize this is a long post.

One other closing idea I have, which came to me reading some of davidm's suggestions: What if posts that are more than six months old are automatically bumped to a separate section that's just labled "Necro-Threads: Use are your own risk, information pertains to mostly old packages" or something like that. Then people who like those threads could use them and post in them. Other people don't have to be bothered. And it completely eliminates for the moderators having to police necro-bumping. That seems like a simple solution that may satisfy all concerns.

Last edited by cb474 (2010-02-08 05:39:42)

Arch Linux

#1 2010-02-05 05:19:47

Old Thread/Necro-Bumping Rule Seems Counter-Productive to Me

#2 2010-02-05 06:25:39

Re: Old Thread/Necro-Bumping Rule Seems Counter-Productive to Me

#3 2010-02-05 07:16:45

Re: Old Thread/Necro-Bumping Rule Seems Counter-Productive to Me

#4 2010-02-05 15:07:00

Re: Old Thread/Necro-Bumping Rule Seems Counter-Productive to Me

#5 2010-02-05 15:40:54

Re: Old Thread/Necro-Bumping Rule Seems Counter-Productive to Me

#6 2010-02-06 04:52:14

Re: Old Thread/Necro-Bumping Rule Seems Counter-Productive to Me

#7 2010-02-06 05:48:32

Re: Old Thread/Necro-Bumping Rule Seems Counter-Productive to Me

#8 2010-02-06 13:45:12

Re: Old Thread/Necro-Bumping Rule Seems Counter-Productive to Me

#9 2010-02-07 01:54:10

Re: Old Thread/Necro-Bumping Rule Seems Counter-Productive to Me

#10 2010-02-07 02:51:54

Re: Old Thread/Necro-Bumping Rule Seems Counter-Productive to Me

#11 2010-02-07 02:59:10

Re: Old Thread/Necro-Bumping Rule Seems Counter-Productive to Me

#12 2010-02-07 08:46:48

Re: Old Thread/Necro-Bumping Rule Seems Counter-Productive to Me

#13 2010-02-07 10:09:07

Re: Old Thread/Necro-Bumping Rule Seems Counter-Productive to Me

#14 2010-02-07 15:09:04

Re: Old Thread/Necro-Bumping Rule Seems Counter-Productive to Me

#15 2010-02-07 17:37:05

Re: Old Thread/Necro-Bumping Rule Seems Counter-Productive to Me

#16 2010-02-07 20:43:01

Re: Old Thread/Necro-Bumping Rule Seems Counter-Productive to Me

#17 2010-02-07 20:54:46

Re: Old Thread/Necro-Bumping Rule Seems Counter-Productive to Me

#18 2010-02-08 05:31:03

Re: Old Thread/Necro-Bumping Rule Seems Counter-Productive to Me

Board footer