'Similar threads' needs to go

[Gymnopedie]

I'm sure this will have been said before, but all it leads to is posters resurrecting threads many months old.

On the latest one, the poster mentioned that it had popped up in her email. Why would she look at the date in that case?

Yes posters could look at the date for every thread they read, but it would be easier if the (dys)function wasn't there, and I'm not at all sure what positive purpose it's supposed to have.

Surely it's up to the person as usually if it's after x months it says zombie at the bottom ?

That only kicks in after a year.

I've just chosen at random a current live thread and visited all the 'similar thread' links on it.

A thread started on 16/04/22 has the zombie message. The others (07/10, 18/07 and and 08/06 - all 2022) don't.

Could you not get a hobby or something instead?

Yeah I dont like it either

I like similar threads - maybe they could restrict them to more recent, but I quite enjoy the blast-from-the-past effect.

Like you, you mean?

Oh God yes.

I usually am on the app, doesn't appear there.

On the desktop version, it's so easy to click into threads from say, several months ago and reactivate them but the matter is closed, it's pointless & it messes up Active Threads. It's really annoying!

Yes I agree, or at least if it's possible, make it current threads rather than ones that are years old, it's quite understandable that people are reading and responding to threads that are actually being suggested to them by the site and not checking the date each and every time. Sometimes something catches my eye in the similar threads bit and I read it and might respond, I always go to the last page and read through that if it's a long thread to get a feel if it's developed and quite often only realise then when someone has blasted another poster for reviving the thread.

Fair points,

They are taking the biscuit so to speak.

Agree 100%.

So many zombie threads are resurrected as a result of this, and it's annoying.

Agreed. People are wasting their time replying on threads which are months, years, even decades old, and the OP is long gone.

Mind you, with some it's a day or two after and the op disappear

Yeah, I appreciate there's always a risk the OP never comes back to the thread, but sometimes these threads can be quite distressing for the OP and he/she probably doesn't need to be reminded of it if still an active member of MN. I'm also extremely tired of reporting them to get them closed, so they will drop down my Threads I'm On list. I've had to do one tonight for a thread from 2015, although in that case it's a spammer. If MN would let old threads auto-close this might also solve some of the problem.

That's a fair and sensible point, I can agree with that.

I agree. It’s really not a useful feature and it seems to just mean “threads of any age with the same words somewhere in the title”. But people have complained about this before and MN seem to have decided to keep it.