I guess it depends. I'm linked to probably 50 or 60 thousand posts where I get an email anytime someone responds to one of them no matter how old they are. It doesn't bother me because I have my email setup to sequester all email in one folder dedicated to receiving SSC email. Since each link in the emails takes me directly to the given post, I just sort by subject and descending date, pick the latest email on a given subject, and then scroll up once I've gotten to the post. It takes me about 5 seconds to see if I need to read more and only about 6 seconds to decide if I want to respond. It's just not a problem and duplicating answers is just proof that the problem still exists and that there may be a concensus on how to handle it. Deleting the posts by subject is easy to do en masse.

You're right. I have commented on the "problem" of people responding to old posts, in the past. My comment is normally directed to someone pointing out that the post is serveral years old and my comment is normally "So? It was a good subject then and it's a good subject now." 😛

Threads like this one deal with a timeless subject. I certainly understand when someone responds to express an opinion about it even if it has been said a hundred times already, especially if they're having the same problem right now. It's human nature to respond in such a fashion otherwise sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn would have never gotten off the ground. Although I don't always care for human nature, it only takes a couple of seconds to scan the titles and delete whole blocks of emails even if I take a quick peek at the latest post. That's a whole lot easier to do than to try to delete human nature.

The only reason why I responded to this one was because I saw a frustrated friend.:-)