outcast wrote:Err, wouldn't it be smarter to PM this rather than post in an old thread?
Not necessarily.
In fact, I would say reviving this thread was the judicious way for RedBrickMarket to go about it. Your concern, obviously, stems from the fact that the Admins and Mods (myself, incidentally, included) tend to get cranky about people replying to old, dead threads. And we do--but for a reason. We get cranky when people reply to old, dead threads with nothing that was worth saying, like "me too," or "that's awesome," or "I thinks this iz ttally coolz, an!"
In cases like those, no point was served by dragging up an old thread, but that does not mean
all old threads need to be treated that way. Some, it is true, should never be raised back up, since they dealt with a time-specific issue, and that time is now long past--threads about preview pictures or prototype parts long after the sets have been released might be such an example. Other threads, however, deal with timeless topics (or less time-relative, anyway), and in these cases it is more appropriate to dig up the old thread, if you're willing to spend the time finding it, than to start a new one. It's one less thread on the forums.
This is one of those cases, since Tony's sticker articles are still up, public, in the How-To section of the site, and--without speaking for anyone else--I know I still regularly visit them when I need a sticker. That being the case, and RedBrickMarket having a pertinent question, there was no need to start a new thread, since the old one could still do fine.
As to your other implicit charge, that RBM might have been wiser to go to PM rather than post publicly at all, that is again a situation matter. The rule of thumb, when it comes to PMing vs. posting is that you PM when something is private and you post when something is public. In this particular case, it's something of a grey matter, and RBM was free to do as s/he choose. Although the question is directed to a particular user (who, in this case, happens to be an Admin, but that doesn't matter--s/he could have been asking Lamanda the same question about
her customs), it's a question anyone may have an interest in knowing the answer to. As such, it was perfectly fine for RBM to post in the public forum.
And, as already noted--
in a case like this--to revive a long-dead thread.
I trust that is all perfectly clear; I'll leave Tony to answer RBM's actual questions.
~Michael A. Joosten - Moderator~