I think there should be some incentive for that, like make those kinds of comments a spotlight or something. Maybe make a community called “late replies” that showcases the best such replies, or have a rule saying they grant free karma (in Reddit’s case).
I think the term would be “necrobump”, and Im not sure why you want to encourage it? If a thread is active for 5 months sure, but otherwise everyone has moved on…
I think the term would be “necrobump”
That’s from old school forums where posting to a thread bumped it back to the top of the feed and thus thrust old info prominently into everyone’s view again. You won’t get that same bump effect with most sorts on Lemmy. (“New comments” sort might work like that though? I’m not sure exactly how that’s handled.)
otherwise everyone has moved on
It’s pretty rare to get much of a response even after just 24 hours or so – not just in terms of comments, but even for upvotes. I think after that point, posts are usually so far down people’s feeds that almost no one sees it any more. That probably also discourages most people from replying since basically no one will see it. (Maybe the poster of the thread or comment you’re replying to will see it, but probably almost no one else will if it’s more than a day or so old.)
Some people do dig through community archives and/or user profiles – particularly after a new thread is posted – and they’ll occasionally upvote old posts, but they very rarely comment.
Its not a global bump, but it does bump it back into conciousness for the person being replied to. Ive had it happen a few times on lemmy, and its always so confusing because i had completely forgotten what i had originally said.
I’m not against necrobumping in certain contexts. If I have a tech support question, I can promise you I’m still clueless after 5 months. Also a niche creative project can take over 5 months to find it’s audience, and creators are usually happy to hear feedback.
necrobump
What a horrible name for “people responding to a thread that is older than a mayfly”.
Suggesting something a few months old is “dead” is especially churn-y; like “Ahmahagawd, that thread is, like, SO last-heartbeaaat”. Ensure the voice dissolves into an indolent vocal fry for best effects.
Oh man, that brings back memories of necroposting on old IPB forums
Never. God no, why?
Waiting 5 months to reply to this.
Well you blew your load in 11hrs.
Whoa. Tantric.
Question in post was never about replying for the first time.
I was just kidding
I commented on a 9 y/o Reddit thread yesterday
It almost time to celebrate the 12th birthday of “can splunk stop being absolutely fucking clueless and claiming their stupidity is a legal problem only they suffer” ticket about authenticated yum repos.
Usually I find my own answer to a Stack Overflow problem I’m having today, but I wrote it two years ago. And that means I’ll have that time machine one day. Woot!
RemindMe! 5 months
Do we have a remind me bot?
Thankfully not, I don’t miss scrolling past publicly-posted comments which could have just been the save button!
Wait the save button can remind you on Lemmy? Is this on the desktop? I don’t see an option on the Voyager app at least.
@remindme@mstdn.social 5 months
@remindme@mstdn.social 5 months
If this works I’ll thank you. In five months.
Just the other day, I got a reply to a thread from ~6 months ago on kbin!
It was spam. :/
I haven’t recently, but when I am trying to solve a problem and come across a post/comment which does a great job of helping me out, I’ll sometimes post a “thank you” to the author. On the receiving end of things, I had posted a couple of kinda useful scripts in the PowerShell sub-reddit and would get both “thank yous” and questions regarding those scripts from time to time. I also had a really popular post (it’s still linked in the wiki) in the cordcutters sub-reddit which elicited questions years later.
Otherwise, this experience is far more common.
I kudos answers constantly. Half the time it’s my own, which means my account knew the answer and posted it, but I remember none of this.
I may be multiple personalities, and I may not even be the smart one.
Within the last year, I’ve definitely had some replies to old threads of mine. And if it’s a question, I’ll respond. And I think I did comment on another’s thread at least once, confirming and thanking them for the solution. All of these were tech support related. I feel like that’s one of the few topical areas where that’s acceptable.
I think that might happen more often on mastodon, since if you reply to a thread there, it gets boosted to all your followers.
It might be interesting to add a sorting method to Lemmy, that would bump posts every time a comment is added.
Perhaps something to turn on for each community individually ?
“sort by recent comments” and “show posts I’ve seen but with new comments”?
Both settings I don’t know actually exist.
