When is a "Thread" too old?
 

First I want to make clear I'm talking about message Threads NOT sewing thread. I'm looking at the "Main" forum and I see people commenting on posts that are several years old; giving advice and answers to the poster's questions. Do these Threads never die? I know I can pull forums up to only get the new stuff, but sometimes I want to see what's being talked about and what were the answers.

Again this is just a puzzling question that I've wanted to ask for a long time. PLEASE, I hope no one takes offense. It took me several minutes to hit the "Submit" button.

My question is: Can't these super old post be locked so they can't be commented on again and brought back to the head of the line?

I think what usually happens is that someone is searching for something, and they come across an old thread. They comment, which pushes it to the top of the stack, someone else sees it and comments (probably not realizing that it's an old thread) and that starts the ball rolling, especially for people who only look at the threads with recent comments. Yes, the older threads could probably be locked, but why?

Just use the Advanced Search (upper right on this page). This allows you to search the entire board, or just a specific forum, like Main or Pictures. You can put in a limit on the last post date, such as last week, last month etc. Although this will still show a 3 year old post that someone just commented on, it will vastly cut down on older stuff.
The other thing I like about Advanced Search, is you can just search for a word that appears in the title of the thread, so you won't get a thread returned with someone's random comment that uses that word.

I understand what you mean about locking a post, because people posting now will probably never reach the original poster. But I don't think there's any harm in generating a new conversation over an old topic.

I use the archive method, so I only see the new topics. If I post on something, I sometimes go back through my posts to see what kind of follow up there's been on a post. Otherwise, if I read every post, I'd be here 24/7!

I really like having access to older posts as they are a treasure of information. When people add on to an older post, I view it as an updating of a topic and like it. The Advance Search suggestions should help you.

It is nice to be able to access words of wisdom that are on the older side, however I wonder about it myself at times. The person asking the original question must have either finished the quilt or solved their problem by now.

I have talked to some newer members and I don't think that they realize that if the post a reply, that the thread moves to the top of the stack. I try real hard to check the date before I post but I missed one recently.

I definitely understand how it can be frustrating at times, but other times it is nice to have all the information in one place rather than across numerous threads.

For example, if someone is asking who has experience with a particular product or technique, I think it's okay to continue to add to an old thread. On the other hand, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to respond to someone asking for opinions about color or pattern on their quilt if the thread is 3 years old. Certainly they have already made that decision quite some time ago. I try now to pay attention to the original date of the thread so that just because one person made the mistake of responding to an old thread, I don't continue to add to it. As far as I know (I used to be a web manager for a small non-profit), there isn't a way to automatically lock all threads past a certain date. They can either be locked individually or they can be mass deleted. I would hate to lose all that valuable information & I know how much work it is for moderators to go in and individually lock threads on a large-scale basis.