I’ll let StackEchange explain.
“On a forum, discussions flow over a period of time. People come and go and the discussion thread slowly resolves itself. Bumping a topic that has been dead for months or years is not doing anything except raising a very old discussion to the top. It is entirely possible that the people involved in said discussion have either forgotten what was going on or simply left the community.”
Plus what CDA said. You can witness it within this thread.
Much of the convo was ending in April 2015. Edward responds a few months later in July 2015. The thread effectively died until being “bumped” in 2016 and then bumped in 2018.
To be fair to the user that bumps, it’s often the case that they just so happen to run into an ancient thread and aren’t cognizant of the timeframe of the discussion (though the dates/times are displayed). It’s often the case that thread will be more fruitful as a new one given most participants have no clue what’s being discussed. It’s even the case at times that we discussed something more than one time, yet an ancient thread is being bumped. And occasionally, the bump is nothing of standing that warrants it being bumped.
I.E. Thread from 2013 or 2014 about the wizard and Excalibur doesn’t warrant being bumped in 2015 to say “It’s Merlin, he made the sword.” Chances are it’s been discussed at length at that time elsewhere and would be better creatin a new thread and not include endless speculation that oftentimes gets ignored anyhow. Another example is the prominent “Lily’s Father” discussions.
Episode discussions being bumped, fine. Things within six months and a year, might be stretching some things, but doesn’t always get closed.
As I’m not going to go through all threads ever and close them, if bumped from a significant time ago or discussed elsewhere or something without standing, I close the thread when it pops up.