Discourse New User Tips and Tricks

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98

Im really new here, but it looks like you can just copy the link, so yes. But maybe users would be leaving your forum, temporary, unless there is a way to embed that

99

Thanks for sharing, this is very helpful.

100

Thank you, thank you, this is very helpful for us and gives us direction, very good, especially good, really really

101

(Over six years later, which really makes this a practical demonstration of exactly the thing we’re talking about I suppose…)

I find it varies from community to community, and from person to person. My inclination is like yours, I’m big into thread necromancy as I feel it can save time having to re-cover old ground. But, wow is there some disagreement on that point.

The necromancy banner encourages you to consider whether you should revive an old post — if you feel it’s discouraging you, then it seems like your conclusion is that you shouldn’t.

If a community is really serious about preventing revival of old posts, they’ll usually set them to auto-lock after a certain period of inactivity. If they don’t do that, then it’s at least tacit admission that there might be valid reasons to resurrect old discussions. There are, however, also reasons not to.

Pros

  1. As you said, it can save time not having to cover old ground
  2. You don’t end up with multiple discussions on the same topic
  3. The people who already participated in the discussion, and presumably have interest in and/or knowledge about the topic, will get notified of your reply.

Cons

  1. Everyone who previously participated in the discussion will get notified. And the longer ago it was and the more participants that represents, the more of them may be annoyed about being dragged back in to an old discussion that they considered long since settled.
  2. Particularly in tech support forums, resurrecting an old discussion often means conflating issues — a problem you’re having today may seem related to one discussed five years ago, but it’s likely that was a completely different version of the software/hardware, and it may not be related at all. You want to make REALLY sure that you’re talking about the same issue, and if there’s even a sliver of doubt it’s better to open a new discussion focused just on the current situation. There’s probably less value than you may think in dragging along the baggage of a 5-year-old report, for a problem you’re experiencing today.

But, like I said, that’s why tech support forums, in particular, usually have discussion auto-lock rules in place.

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