I have wondered whether members who have long since left the site, but have enabled e-mail notifications, are surprised when they suddenly receive a thread activity notice.

I find merges confusing because there's often a disjointed flow to the conversation.

It's interesting to spot names you haven't seen in years.

I also get surprised to see members who are still suspended... years after the suspension started. I thought that suspensions were temporary. Unless there are permanent suspensions why not just ban the person?

I always assumed that the suspended person never returned. That perhaps if they logged in, their privileges would automatically be restored. I have nothing to base this assumption on. Perhaps someone else with experience can shed some light on this.

It's interesting to spot names you haven't seen in years.

I also get surprised to see members who are still suspended... years after the suspension started. I thought that suspensions were temporary. Unless there are permanent suspensions why not just ban the person?

My biggest peeve about bumped threads is I don't always normally assume it's a bumped thread. Sometimes, I find myself quoting and responding to someone and realizing that they haven't posted here in years.

I don't think that the forum software could do this, but I'd love it if it was possible for bumped threads to change the color of older posts if there's a significant amount of lapsed time between the old posts and the bump.

But why does that even matter? I don't look at this post, for example, as being specific to you and I; every post in every thread 'belongs' to the community-at-large, the individuals don't really matter.

Even if the person you're quoting never sees your post, your post is just as relevant to the thread as any other post.

I think it was probably a case of poster was suspended for a month let's say. Both the poster and the mods forgot about it and the poster's status never changed because they never tried to come back.

Ah okay. I just assumed at the end of the given suspension time, it would automatically come off.

There's no timer per se. You have to remember to unsuspend.

It's a valid point. Sometimes I start to respond then stop when I realize the thread is five years old. That doesn't mean my point is invalid, but... it just feels funny, I guess.

If anyone's got some bread or bread-like puns, I know a thread that's just RYE-ing to get bumped again...

Every once in a while I think about bumping that "Do you ever feel like a thread killer..." thread but then decide it's best to keep that thread dead.

Irony