6
votes
Suggestion: New tag for "Evergreen" posts
Tildes has a lot of threads that are not time dependant, be they asks, surveys, recommendations and hypotheticals. Should we make an effort to give these posts an evergreen tag, and maybe even auto bump them back into circulation after a few years?
Although I've argued in favor of something like this before, I think once a topic has been inactive long enough, it's usually better to start fresh with a link to the old topic. Consider it starting a new chapter in the discussion.
I think both approaches are meaningful in different ways. People are still more likely to participate in the new thread before checking the old one because direct participation is the path of less resistance. So by making a new thread, you're signaling to people that the old one is optional context. If you make a new comment on an old thread, however, people are forced to see the comment in a specific place among the previous comments, you're telling people that the old content is necessary context. I'd go further and argue that whether they actually check the old content is not as important as the expectation that they did (or did not), which affect how people engage with each other.
It's similar to the way our comment box is at the bottom instead of the top. Functionally they're the same, but people are nudged in different ways.
It's an interesting idea, but I feel like the bump mechanics and activity sort does this admirably already, and TBH I'm a bit uncomfortable with the idea of some topics being bumped automatically merely due to a tag being applied to them. So do you have an example of a post that you feel would be worthy of being automatically bumped back into circulation years later without a new user comment being the cause?
Can't really name a thread in particular. Maybe the sense of nostalgia would better spent if there was a one year later update thread for notable events or a revisiting thread for opinions and recommendations.