and thanks for the interesting meditation.

> reminded me of a spate of recent PM necroposts, such as:

Can I add this? I suspect it wins the world record:

Re^3: Installing (lotsa) modules Jan 24, 2021 (root: Oct 11, 2001)

> I get the feeling that necroposts have been on the rise here lately - interested to hear theories why.

Well, only a nicely crafted perl program can confirm this, but we must consider some factor. Firstly active users are declining or, at least, their number is by far smaller than in the golden age. Given these decreasing numbers, passing years the percentage of older nodes on the total becomes greater. I remember some years ago zentara (he was already not here everyday in that period) complaining in the CB that something was broken with Newest Nodes because the Question section disappeared. It was simply that no questions were asked in the previous 24 hours. It happens nowadays, few times but happens.

Why I Like.. answers to ancient posts

Firstly I must admit I dont like the necropost term. It sounds very negative and disgusting also, at least for me. Then I think it is not the right term. You are indeed speaking about something still alive:

> The upside is that PM's extreme longevity..

For me not only the longevity but also the average quality of posts makes the difference.

You know: I'm a perl only programmer. When I have a problem I try to synthetize it and I goolge: perl X Y Z using keywords I suppose to be more relavant. Almost always I get back results from perlmonks and SO. After some glancing I hit, if available, Browse more entries at perlmonks.org and I found generally the answer I need (when looking at SO I carefuly look to authors and to the content of the answer).

Then it is up to me to see the age of the post and decide if it is still valid. Perl made a huge effort to remain backward compatible so many times older posts are still valid.

In addidion some technology evolved a lot but others are stable since decades. The main example is Tk: I discovered that perlmonk is the last community where people use good old Tk and are able to answer questions. But Tk is a special case. Think about DBI and tell me if posts by gmax are out of date. If something can be done in a smarter way since DBI x.y an answer to a gmax post is a good thing to have.

Many of us maintain also very old systems so a 10 yo answer can be still valid.

So my opinion is that a post is not a necro one if someone still has that problem, need or interest. Also if the technology it refers is still alive, can be a valid post.

So let suppose I found a post of 10 years ago mentioning a bug in a package. Then I discover that a recent release of the module fixed that bug. If I have the time I would answer with a meaning title ( like: Re: XY -- fixed in release x.y.z ) and shortly describing the solution. It is not necroposting: is long life support :)

Which posts are necro ones?

By other hand a post can be (but not necessarily) a necro one if related to a dead technology or refering to older, deprecated or dismissed perl or module feature. For example object introspection made without the help of a modern module is something at least weird nowadays.

Also direct answers to monk after years can be considered necroposts (in the mere negative sense of the term) if they dont add nothing still actual and valid to the matter.

So in conclusion it is up to us to answer to older nodes when it makes sense possibly mentioning the time gap in an esplicit manner.

L*