Rule about repeat postings

Hi, okay, new member here so I don't expect my opinion to count for much but here goes.


Just posted a poll in one of the forums, and apologized in advance if it was a repeat posting.

Respondents did not add to the thread except to point me to a previous post on the same subject...but that post...was from 2002....and I found that a little silly that we can't discuss subjects here and now that may have been covered two, three years ago.


I mean, in two or three years you get lots of new members, and people change their minds as well. After a certain period of time, subjects should be allowed to come up anew so that people can discuss them with new ideas and new members adding their input too.


I think it's detrimental to the flow of ideas to force people to look back through the entire history of this forum to see if something they want to talk about has already been discussed....to me that just seems like it isn't good for making new members feel welcome or helping the forum activity to grow.

But what do I know I'm new here. I'm just going based on what I've seen at most other message boards I belong to.


In other places, similar rules exist about repeat postings, but there's limits....i.e. "Don't post double-threads on subjects that have RECENTLY been discussed."

Recently might mean within the last couple of months.

Not the last couple of years.


Another post I was directed to was one from 6 months ago that was shut down because the members pointed to the 2-year old thread.


Just seems silly to me. Can we change this to "recent" discussion, because as I said...ideas change, people change, the member list changes...it's good to "refresh" a topic after a period of time to reflect those changes, instead of dredging up ancient, long dead threads where half the respondents aren't active or registered users anymore.....

Maybe I'm wrong...I'm just used to how it works elsewhere...