UESP Forums

I recently ran across this edit of one user deleting another user's signed discussion page entry listing the reason as 'necropost'.

Is this a thing here? From my experience, discussion pages are always treated like user pages, in that editing another user's signed post is highly frowned upon.
I realize every wiki operates differently, but this is one area I've always noticed remains the same.

Yep, “responding to a post so old it's unlikely to be read by the poster or of concern to anyone else (a necropost)” is indeed one of the exceptions to the usual “avoid deleting/modifying others’ talk page contributions” policy.

It seems silly to apply this type of rule to a wiki discussion page though. Necroposting implies the act of unnecessarily burying current forum threads or topics. The format used for discussion is completely different.
Talk pages can be a great tool for improving article pages and a useful supplement for users looking for as much information as possible relating to specific quirky issues. If the information is relevant, timestamps should be irrelevant.

You are correct. If the information remains relevant to improving the article in question, feel free to liberally revert any necropost removals. The problem is situations where people reply to ancient queries from 10 years ago; aside from being of little help to the original poster, the solutions are oftentimes already answered on the modern article itself.

People do tend to apply this rule a little overzealously and there is no problem with challenging such edits. However, it remains an important exception to have in place, to cut down on the amount of irrelevant posts where the necroposter himself fails check the timestamps.

I agree that "necroposting" can be okay, and that some people are overzealous-- and in some cases downright nasty-- about deleting posts or criticizing people who revive an old thread.

My own feeling is that if a forum wants to declare that reviving old threads is not allowed, then they should either (a) delete all threads older than the cutoff date; (b) do not delete them, but lock them; or (c) neither delete nor lock them, but pop up a warning if someone tries to post in them.

I realize that the feasibility of these suggestions is largely determined by what the forum software is capable of-- unless it's going to be up to a moderator or admin to delete or lock old threads manually.

But it would be far fairer to forum members to implement one of those suggestions rather than to outright ban someone who revives an old thread-- which I've seen happen in some forums where the "anti-necroposting lynch mob" is extremely nasty about this.

If the material in the old thread is claimed to be "no longer relevant," then delete the thread.

If the thread is considered to be still relevant, but is off-limits for new comments, then lock it.

And if the thread is considered to be still relevant, and still worthy of new comments, then pop up a warning if anyone is posting a new comment in it, especially if the new comment quotes a message that is older than a certain age:

"You are posting in a thread that is more than X weeks old," or "You are replying to a post that is more than X weeks old," followed by "Please review your message in light of that fact and consider whether you wish to post it," or something like that.

And just to be clear, I'm not referring to this forum or wiki, but to many other sites where the members and mods alike are viciously nasty toward anyone who revives an old thread. Some of the nasty comments I see are, to my mind, far more objectionable and "ban-able offenses" than the necroposting was.

I'm being badgered right now by a wiki admin who keeps reverting my addition to a discussion page because it's a "necropost".

This is a ridiculous policy, and is extremely off-putting. It doesn't hurt anything at all for someone to post something on-topic on a discussion page. It *does* hurt people's desire to contribute to the wiki to badger them and devalue their contributions for arbitrary reasons like the date of what they're responding to.

I'm sorry you are having trouble posting on talk pages. Feel free to leave a message on the Admin Noticeboard about this and we can help you more from there!