Clarfy the wording in Rule 7

[Norn]

My suggestion is that rule 7 be altered to answer the following questions to reduce confusion among new users reading the rules for the first time.

Threads that have been dormant for 1 month are considered dead threads

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What does dormant mean?

Now my first guess would be: a thread that has been dormant for X days is a thread that had its last post X days ago. The thing is, under this definition, a post that brakes the necromancy rules resets the dormancy counter, which is not how the rule is enforced.

On almost every single necroed thread you see someone make this mistake and I can't help but think if the rule explicitly forbade doing this the amount would go down.

Threads that have been dormant for 1 month are considered dead threads

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How long is a month?

If I had to guess I'd say it's probably the average of 30 days but the chance it's February (28 days) might end up putting you off from writing a review near the deadline.

Actually, now I google it, it looks like the (median) average is 31 days so maybe I been wrong the entire time


But yeah, what should be a very objective rule has areas open to interpretation and it makes things slightly more confusing for new users than they need to be.

 

[Nekraa]

Dormant is, no posts since last post, yeah. Necromancy doesn't count as "raising" a thread from dormancy. Several posts within a short amount of time after necromancy will get the thread locked, and unlocked at the thread owner's request.

A month is from date x on month y to date x on month y+1. So if the last post was on January 1, it's necromancy if the post is after February 1 (the same year, of course).

 

[january1may]

Several posts within a short amount of time after necromancy will get the thread locked

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Wait, really? I didn't know that, and it's very sad.

Basically every time a thread is necro-ed I see a bunch of comments - some by people discussing the necro, some by new readers unaware that there had been a necro. Exceptions don't appear to be very common, and are usually in threads that weren't that popular in the first place.
I thought that such comments would not, by themselves, send the necro into the aggravated status where the thread would be locked; if them doing so is intended, this should be clarified in the rules.