Post by BTR1701Post by suzeeqPost by f***@gmail.comI am a retired female Army officer and am a ma'am. It drives me nuts
when they call the CPT "sir"
She asked to be called that. And this thread has got to be 2 years old...
So what? I've never understand why there's a subset of people on Usenet who
get all prickly over old threads. If someone has something to say that's
relevant to an older discussion, there's nothing wrong with posting a
follow up to it.
Usenet was never intended to be permanent. It's built on the concept
that messages would expire.
Dejanews changed that, making the archive, but they didn't allow replies
to old messages. Google took over that archive, and didn't allow replies
to old messages either. But then they changed the interface, to match
their own groups, and suddenly it was happening. I complained, I hope
others did, and the bug wsa fixed. But the next iteration of the
interface put it back, and it just keeps happening.
We are not a web forum. When someone ressurects an old thread, they
aren't adding to that thread, they are resurrecting a long dead thread.
If they have something to say, they can start a new thread.
To make matters worse, most of these old thread resurrecters have no clue
where they are, or when the post was. Since it is all a google problem,
they may not quote, the subject header may not have a "re:" to indicate a
reply, and much of the time, it's not added information, it's "is this
thing still for sale?". 20 years after the original post, the original
poster may be dead, and is more than likely not still around to answer.
The only context we have is that we know the google idiots are doing this,
so when you get that "is this thing still for sale" with no other context,
you know another google idiot has replied to an old message.
It would be fine if we all read via google's interface, we'd see the old
messages there. But we don't. So too many think this is a new message
(and somehow the earlier messages in the thread haven't arrived yet, which
used to happen but I haven't seen that in a long time) and they reply as
if it's a new thread. But back in 1996 or whatever, the message was
replied to and all that needed saying wsa said back then. SO it's just a
rehash. A few months ago, someone resurrected an old thread, though only
a few years old, and it ended up with the same people replying that did
the first time, with about the same information, all because some google
idiot thought they had some reason to resurrect the old thread. And the
original poster, back four years, had even provided a followup at the
time, posting about the solution he came up with, and that everything was
fine.
That's another subset of these resurrections, they are often to sell
soemthing. Either someone hoping that guy in 1994 who was looking for a
certain part might still want it, or outright spam, someone hiding behind
an old thread (so it looks legit) but when you read the message, it's the
usual spam.
Google at one point put up a list of famous Usenet threads. At least one
of those, the one where Linus first annoucnes Linux, has been long
vandalized by google idiots who think it's "cute" to post a reply 20 years
later saying "thanks". It's a bastardization of usenet.
Even the "well I added to this old thread so the information would be
together" makes no sense. If someone is fixing something in 1994, and
someone comes up with some tidbit in 2014, the search engine that found
the original thread will find the second message, they don't have to be
linked together.
There is absolutely no reason to reply to messages older than 30 days (the
limit dejanews, and original google, had in place).
I have messages saved going back to August 1996. I don't reply to them,
even though I could. SOme I saved for the information, some I saved
intending to reply later, and after a certain time, I realize it's silly
to reply, the conversation has moved on.
Michael