Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To ask who keeps resurrecting zombie threads?

11 replies

Pipbin · 06/09/2014 15:27

In the last few days there have been a couple of threads that have been posted on that are zombie threads.

I can understand if someone is asking a technical question and the new poster has googled for advice, the thread has come up and they have posted to see if there has been a solution.
However, the last couple of zombie threads I have seen have been about cat shit and moving into a council house.

How, and why, are people finding old AIBU threads to post on?

OP posts:
Nomama · 06/09/2014 15:37

The Zombie Master?

Newbies using the Search button?

One of the recent zombies was on a pretty current topic, so maybe the resurrector hadn't realised - I almost posted on one, til the Zombie Alert became visible. Had I not read to the end I may not have noticed!

Pipbin · 06/09/2014 15:40

Had I not read to the end I may not have noticed!

Oh we've all done that. It's easy to not notice the date when something appears in the active list.

What I want to know is who is that person who finds a thread on cat shit or what ever from 3 years ago and then posts on it just continuing the conversation? How did they find it?

OP posts:
SomethingOnce · 06/09/2014 15:40

The MN search function and finding threads via Google, I'd have thought.

DiaDuit · 06/09/2014 15:41

Well surely their name is above their post so you could just PM and ask them?

CatsCantTwerk · 06/09/2014 15:42

What Dia siad! Confused

upthedamnwotsit · 06/09/2014 17:25

On the topic of zombie threads, I've always wondered about the people who go around resurrecting threads in relationships that mention the escort website Adultwork. They always leap to the defence of the husband, insult the OP a lot and then say a bunch of nice things about the website...all on threads that are months or years old.

Utterly bizarre. I don't understand the rationale behind it and it happens on a semi-frequent basis.

Vitalstatistix · 06/09/2014 19:31

I would imagine they work for adultwork or use it.

I think that any time someone who's never posted before decides to join to heap praise upon any organsation or venue or something that's being talked about negatively.

They aren't as subtle and clever as they think they are, with their mummymammy221 usernames and their lavish praise.

bungmean · 06/09/2014 20:08

I've still to work out why posting on old threads is such A Bad Thing on MN.

Vitalstatistix · 06/09/2014 23:32

It's not. It's just irritating.

Because we all expect threads to be current, many of us don't think to double check the date on each thread.

So you can be giving advice to someone with a very specific work issue or something, only to find out the issue was about 8 years ago Grin

I suppose you could argue that it's not a big deal, it's a few minutes out of your day, but it does feel like a waste of time and it irks. Grin

Also, it's a bit like walking into a pub a year after a group of people had a chat in there about their favourite bands and announcing to an empty room that you're a fan of Blur. What's the point? Everyone's gone. Nobody cares.

Again though, it's not a big deal. Just a bit of wasted time.

But even though it doesn't really matter - it's still annoying. I can't really justify why Grin

MNHQ could solve the problem in a second, by locking threads a certain time after the last post on them. Anyone who wanted to refer to an old thread could still see it, but it would be clear it was an archived thread. If for some reason someone had a burning desire to talk about a 10 yr old thread, they could always link to it.

But they won't do that and I don't know why. Never heard them explain why they don't want to. but it's their site so they can do what the hell they like really

walkonthewildside · 06/09/2014 23:36

It would solve the problem of the 600000th thread on P & C parking if people just searched previous thread though.

Vitalstatistix · 06/09/2014 23:47

yeah, but everyone wants to talk about stuff for themselves, no matter how many times other people have talked about something, it's not the same as you talking about something.

I bet every topic you could ever think of is here in the archives somewhere.

We'd all just be sat here in silence Grin MNHQ would have to, I dunno, load pacman or something just to keep us busy

New posts on this thread. Refresh page