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Comment by layer8 | Hacker News Reader

What I mean regarding Reddit is that you couldn’t have a thread running for 13 years like that, which you could easily follow (track up to which comment you’ve already read) and conveniently browse like on a forum. Pagination is important for that.

On web forums, a new comment on a thread automatically bumps that thread up to the top of the thread list, which means that even after a pause, existing threads gain traction like if they were new threads. (Possibly even more than new threads, due to the existing contents.) That way it’s easy to have a focused discussion for weeks/months/years on a particular subtopic.

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But the problem with that approach is that people tend to revive zombie threads. I would estimate that <1% of threads actually have any useful discussion after 10 years, the rest is bumping zombie threads.

A simple visual indicator of the age of a post such as a zombie emoji (or something less tacky) is all that is needed to quickly disregard zombie posts you aren't interested in. Forums are great but we definitely need a UX overhaul incorporating the last 15 years of web UX research.

About UX, I agree insofar as web forums have worse usability than Usenet clients had before. However, I don’t see how web UX has improved in the last 15 years, in particular on the desktop, and in particular regarding forum and messaging apps.

Mainstream design has taken a total nosedive, but there's still great UX research being done across multiple domains, one big driver being games.

It would be great to have a couple of blog posts about that.

You're right. Something I'll think about.

Yes please, people in UX wastelands need hope and positive visions :)

I’m not sure what qualifies as a zombie thread. If the new comments are meaningful contributions to the topic, it’s perfectly fine to revive an old thread. It’s certainly better than to have new threads about the same topic every few days or weeks, ignoring the previous discussions.

In any case, I’ve never experienced reviving old threads to be a significant issue, or to happen inappropriately to any significant degree.

"Necro" or "zombie" threads aren't actually bad

High-quality, long-lived threads could be renamed "Immortal", since they are periodically renewed with fresh content/life, while some older comments are still relevant.

I would just like to estimate that >99% of threads older than 10 years have useful information and the potential for useful discussion.

I realize that where i am enthusiastic about older things, cars/bikes/tech/languages, you probably like new stuff. I hope you realize that most of the zombie revivalists agree with me. Most of the time we are looking for a new solution to an old problem, which is the definition of progress. Locking threads after 6 months (thanks Reddit) or berating someone who want to revive an old topic, cripples progress.

One approach is to post an old, valuable thread (from Reddit or elsewhere) to HN, where annotated/appended conversation can continue indefinitely, especially if it reaches the HN front page for a one-time infusion of new readers and commenters.

What we need are search engines to offer an opt-in view or keyword which prioritizes this genre of valuable older evergrowing content. Perhaps Brave Goggles can be adapted to this purpose, using HN reposts and other signals of longevity.

Not my experience at all. I spent a whole lot of time on the endless sphere forum (forum for building PEVs) when I was in my teens and early 20s, and in my 30s now some of the technical threads from back then are still relevant and going strong. The discussion on there is light-years better than Reddit and HN for anything related to power electronics or EVs in general.

The ability to revive zombie threads is a feature.

While zombie threads exist I hardly would call them a large problem. They are a tiny annoyance if anything.

I wish more people would do that. Reddit used to have that stupid 6 month limit on threads making it difficult to reply to someone saying something 4 years ago. They also need better tools to keep track of replies to older comments.

I have never understood the problem of reviving threads. I've tried, but I really only see positives.

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