Preventing thread necromancy

[weckar]

Earlier today I accidentally performed thread necromancy by being off the 45-day mark by less than a week. Mea culpa, rules are rules.

It's got me thinking, though: why can't threads that fall under that exact stipulation be locked automatically? Or, if that's too much database strain, have posts made to those threads be rejected as they are made?

I am not familiar with the forum software so I won't make claims like "It's only one line of code", but there is already a validation function there both to filter out profanity and to make sure the message is long enough. It does not appear to be a stretch to add a single additional condition?

[DataNinja]

I imagine there's no auto-lock because there are certain threads that are exempt from the necromancy rule (like peoples' homebrew). In addition, locking a thread makes it much harder to quote stuff from it (you can no longer quote a post from a locked thread, it all needs to copy things over manually), making it much harder to reference older threads if you make a new one about the topic as the necro rule suggests doing.

And then the validation also prevents the valid post-45 day posting. And would probably interfere if people have subsequently gotten permission to reopen a thread.

[weckar]

While I agree the locking is probably an issue, the latter need not be. The script only has to look at the most recent post, after all. So for a 're-opening', all one has to do is get a moderator post in there to make it valid again until the next 45-day-lull.

As for the homebrew section; that being the only exception makes it normally possible to check if someone is OP to a thread or not.

Again, not saying it is no work at all, but it seems a decent long-term investment considering (from what I have seen) thread necromancy accounts for about 90% of all locks required.

[LibraryOgre]

The Mod Ogre: Briefly, yes, it would be theoretically possible, but would likely cause more problems than saying "Don't do that" and occasionally slapping the wrist of folks who do it.