Begging your pardon, but I do not understand your points...

>>> Are you posting to answer these threads?... then the person the info is for is probably not around to benefit from your post anyway

You have not way of knowing that folks are gone. And if they are so what? What does that have to do with the advancement and catalog of human knowledge? This is a historical source, not unlike Wikipedia. Topics in such user-generated storage areas ought never be closed to new, relevant, applicable data. Furthermore, posts are not just for 1 person but the community at-large, and also for future members who have not even arrived yet. There is no way to tell what people will search for in the future. Why not let the record be as complete as possible. Sure, off-topic stuff should be out, new-topic stuff should be out, but related-stuff should stay. Post-prominence should be factored perhaps by both a single recent entries in a given topic and also by number of fairly recent entries, so a single new post in an otherwise mainly inactive old thread would not make it leap to the top of the list by virture of a single new post. Details could be worked out to make it more equitable and to discourage post-bumping.

>>> or the issue will be resolved by now one way or another

...plus, given that the community at-large generally will say things like "this question has already been asked" it makes sense to group all replies under the single "question" when possible. Perhaps.

I am just saying this "policy" might need rethinking, or perhaps community policing by voting with "report as necro", or something like that.

Just an idea.

(But, yes, of course, throw out the real trash posts as-needed.)

HTH.

Thanks.

-- Mark Kamoski