23
votes
At what point is a post too old?
I wanted to make another post asking about podcast recommendations. I last asked this 3 months ago, is it worth just reviving discussion on that post, or at this point is it better to just make a new post?
I know Tildes values long-lasting discussion, but when a post is that old, isn't there value in starting over, especially since there are a lot of new people who haven't answered before and might benefit from a bit more visibility on their answers?
That's a good point. I've decided to revive it - quite a few suggestions were being duplicated, so I figure there might also be some discussion on older comments.
Will it still rise if I'm using the default
Activityfromlast 3 dayssort, so that I can see a topic with new activity even if it's months old?No. That shows you only topics which were posted in the last 3 days that have had recent activity on them. The podcast topic from 3 months ago won't show up in that sort, even if it has recent activity. You'd have to be using the
ActivityfromAll timesort option to see that podcast topic on your front page.You can always choose that option for yourself. I have.
Oh, I know that.
But if I keep posting comments reminding everyone they can change the default sort, maybe enough people will change their default sort to influence the culture as well. :)
Even so, having a topic be "live" for 3 days is still an improvement over somewhere like Reddit, where a post dies after 24 hours maximum.
It is default if you are browsing a group; only the start page defaults to "Last 3 days".
Interesting. I had assumed it would include new activity as long as it occurred in the last three days. I'm going to have to pay better attention to which sort I'm using, because they make your front page vary wildly.
It makes me wonder something that always bothered me about reddit: you never know that you're seeing the same things other users are seeing. I've missed huge threads on reddit because there's just so much going on, and my sort and subscribed subs are different from almost every other person there. A day later, I'm r/outoftheloop. On a (for instance) phpBB forum, you always know that your fellow readers are seeing exactly what you do, and that adds a sense of community—you're not likely to miss anything they've seen and are discussing. On reddit/~, you don't have any idea what they're seeing, and are much more likely to completely miss something that gains traction and has a large amount of discussion. Hmm.
Agreed! I think the only thing we might be missing is a "X new messages since last visit" type feature so we can know how much activity a new thread has.
You're not misunderstanding: that setting does say how many comments were posted in a thread since you last read it. I have that feature switched on, and it does this for me.
However, it shows the number of new comments only on the front page, under each listed topic, not within the topics themselves.
Awesome, that will help a lot, thanks!
See also: https://tildes.net/~tildes/4i1/necroposting
Thanks, I thought I remembered a thread like this!
I feel like monthly would be appropriate in general, but I don't think podcast recommendations will change that often. In this case it seems fine to me to ask again, as the user base has grown since 3 months ago.
This is pretty much exactly how I feel right now - favourites wouldn't change that much, but the website has grown a lot.
In general, I would say anything longer than three days minimum, since I believe that's the default search.
But for specific topic like yours I would revive it, since answers don't need to be current.