Too many old threads coming up again

Personaltrainer87 made the suggestion of getting rid of all threads over a year old, which I think is a great idea. Just thought I'd post it here so hopefully the people who can do something about it will see it.

There have been a lot of zombie threads lately popping up from 2007-2008, and when I search the forums for something I find threads going back to '04 so it's no surprise new members are replying to threads that have been dead for some time if they find a thread through the forum search.

If something is important, people can start a new thread.

Can we please delete the older ones? I'm getting sick of being about to reply to something and then realising it was posted over a year ago.

i agree.  if it's an informative thread, that's one thing, but when people start giving advice to someone who posted a problem two years ago and hasn't logged in since, it's a bit ridiculous.

I agree that these old threads might pose a problem for people who are doing searches and not paying attention to the fact that it's over a year old (and thus not relevant to the OP to get an answer from them)...

However, I do believe that there would be value in leaving very old threads for viewing only... I've personally found some of the really old threads useful, when there aren't recent threads that bring up the exact same points. 

Here are my thoughts for potential solutions (by the site administrators):

1) I've seen on other sites that some threads were "closed" for input.  Maybe they can look into doing that to these old ones?  This way, nobody makes a mistake about replying to a completely dead thread. 

2) As for search results coming up with old threads, I'm sure it's possible (for the site admins) to set the default to "only show threads from the last month" so that the user has to manually change the search criteria to expand the results in subsequent searches.  I imagine this could be set as a preference specific to each user, but a 'site-wide' solution would probably be easiest for implementation.

I trust that they'll figure something out that will be agreeable to all.

I second panda's idea, cuz I, too, find the old threads useful. I started this site in 2006 (under a diff username who's password I forgot) so it is helpful for me to search and find threads that were informative and started back when there was more helpful information on this website.

Maybe the mods can be sensitive to everyone's needs? Thanks!

Original Post by panda651:

1) I've seen on other sites that some threads were "closed" for input.  Maybe they can look into doing that to these old ones?  This way, nobody makes a mistake about replying to a completely dead thread. 

That's a really good idea.

One of the threads that I frequent the most was started in October 2007. 
Would that one have to go as well?

Even if the mods had permission to lock old threads it would probaby take about two years to lock the ones over a year old.

Original Post by spoiled_candy:

One of the threads that I frequent the most was started in October 2007. 
Would that one have to go as well?

Even if the mods had permission to lock old threads it would probaby take about two years to lock the ones over a year old.

I trust that the site administrators/owners will not do anything rash and will carefully consider the implications of any change before making it (just as spoiled_candy points out that some old threads continue to be active).

To clarify my earlier post:

I imagine that the site administrators would be able to lock threads based on certain criteria, like the fact that it's both a thread started over 1 year ago and it's been inactive for 2 months (just my example, not necessarily what they would choose to do).  So I absolutely wouldn't worry about the active thread...  Also, I imagine that this could be implemented quickly in an automated fashion, rather than persons going to each individual thread.

By site administrator, I am talking about technical staff with access to computer code and the overall site, like the owners.  In other words, I don't think that this would be something that the moderators would have to do...  Of course, I could be wrong.

I hope that a good solution will develop, but these things do take time, so I'm just going to try reminding myself to be careful about original thread dates in the near future.