What is the Reason for the Necro Rule?

Most likely people who necro threads that aren't relevant anymore...
People sometimes google for stuff and randomly ask a question in that thread or make a comment.
Per example people in veno forums going like
"the golems north of etherblade aren't the best tanks anymore! DX the crystaline magmite is! DX "

And well.. a lot of info is outdated by now ._. it'll cause confusion ._."

Waterfal - Sanctuary wrote: »

Most likely people who necro threads that aren't relevant anymore...

except that the rule is not enforced in a manner that would support this proposed purpose. it's enforced blanket-wise without regard to the thread's content, or context, or the relevancy of the necroing post's question or remark.

the game does change over time, of course, and that does introduce a risk of old threads becoming not only irrelevant but outright misleading. however, to judge by just how the necro rule is actually enforced, my best guess is that it's just an arbitrary social convention we're supposed to abide by as a way of showing our belonging in this mini-society; it's a taboo, in other words.

There were months where people would do nothing but necro really old threads because they were bored. So this was created.

Can't say as I've ever been a member of a forum that didn't have a necro thread. Enforced properly, it can be a very useful tool for keeping the forums neat and up to date.

I do have to agree to an extent with lennie though. The mods here seem to use it as a blanket - check post date, lock thread - without taking the 10 seconds to check and see if it's a valid post.

Drazomyst - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Many people miss the previous post dates and assume the thread is new if they don't recognise or remember it. This can lead to false or out-dated information spreading, panics and confusion. Many players leave after several months or over a year, so sometimes you get players quoting and replying to players who have long since gone. Even if they still play and frequent the forums, opinions and knowledge etc can change a lot even in one month.

Would you want to be quoted and called a noob for asking an obvious question that you asked two years ago again? Or when you asked something which would make you sound crazy today, as things can change a lot?

I've even seen a couple of times where someone tried to resurrect some ancient closed-beta threads in attempt to make others think their characters and everything else will be wiped. b:surrender

And those people looked like complete idiots, because it takes half a second to check the post date on the threads.

Necro rule is purely for upping you post count. No not the person who necro'd but the 50 people who cry necro after before it gets closed.

So why not just add a simple code that closes all threads that hasn't been active in over a month? That should prevent people from accidentally posting in "dead threads".

if accidental posts in old threads is truly the problem, then that's not a problem with forum posters' behavior; that would be a bug in the forum skin. make the datestamp more clearly visible, and/or make it tell you that "you are composing a reply to an X (days,weeks,months) old thread" in a visible manner.

Ban someone for posting to a "Necro" thread.

Actually, you "could" get banned for repeatedly necroing threads. I'm sure that just because a person didn't look at the date and necroed a thread once, they wouldn't get banned for it.

LenieClarke - Heavens Tear wrote: »

except that the rule is not enforced in a manner that would support this proposed purpose. it's enforced blanket-wise without regard to the thread's content, or context, or the relevancy of the necroing post's question or remark.

the game does change over time, of course, and that does introduce a risk of old threads becoming not only irrelevant but outright misleading. however, to judge by just how the necro rule is actually enforced, my best guess is that it's just an arbitrary social convention we're supposed to abide by as a way of showing our belonging in this mini-society; it's a taboo, in other words.

Eh, I see it as more of a keeping the grey area to a minimum. Saying 'Don't post in a thread that's over one month old.' is pretty clear. If, however, they said 'Don't post in a thread that's over one month old unless you have something relevant to the topic to add.' then it would create a bit of a hazy area which some people would 'exploit' just because they can.

Besides, how many 'good' necros have you seen? Most that I've seen fall into a few distinct categories:
1-The person who only reads the thread title/first post and responds to the questions which was answered four times on the first page.
2-The person who quotes someone on page 27 of a 96 page thread (who quit months ago) to tell them how much they fail.
3-The person who brings up a thread from years ago where the information was correct at the time but, due to recent updates, is now incorrect just to say the information is incorrect (gee, really?). Ironically, if the person had not necrod the thread then the, now incorrect, information would have never seen the light of day again leaving the 'new' correct information where new players can easily see and find. Unfortunately, because of their idiocy new players will see the two pieces of contradictory information and, if they don't check the post dates (which, let's be honest, not everyone does or else there wouldn't be necro posts), will become confused and either bring the previously necrod thread to life once again (if it wasn't closed) or create another thread.

As for the 'don't necro threads/use search' dilemma, it's not really a contradiction. Half the new threads that are made just ask a simple question that would be easily answered with a five minute search. Instead they choose to spend perhaps two minutes typing up and creating a new thread then another thirty minutes waiting for someone to reply. It'll probably take at least 10 more minutes for someone to say something other than 'use search' so their most common argument that creating a new thread would get and answer faster is wrong.

My favorite is when someone says "I'm too lazy to search" and expects a reply other than "I'm too lazy to answer your ****ing question".

Do not believe the lies. Its all about post count, an epeen metric