I have some time and experience here on indietalk too. I don't see
whymonarae's, Scoopicman's, Cracker Funk's or mbncinema's replies
as wasting peoples time. Yes, their replies were almost a year after the
last one and Future_Screen never responded - she rarely ever responded
to any of her threads – but the new replies are helpful for someone
interested in in this, specific subject.
If someone wants to contribute to an old thread I think that's great. If
an old thread is revived by discussion I think that's a good thing. Yes,
the OP gets nothing from it, but new members might be helped.
This site cannot waste peoples time. If someone wants to read and
comment on old threads it's not a waste of time to them. I don't see
bumping old threads as a mistake to be avoided.
Perhaps what could be done is to merge the discussion of thread locking
and allow the “write horror without disgust” discussion to continue.