Dottie I think a lot of those happen when the person gets to GardenWeb through a google search or other such search engine. They stumble upon a thread on a topic they're interested in and never think to look at the date when they respond.

I wish more people would do searches on common questions before asking the same questions we get and answer, often many times each year- so i guess i'm the opposite. I don't like to see the really old, long threads pop up either, though. But, some of the really info packed ones are nice to see again.

this is easy for a moderator to remedy-they just have to CLOSE the topic to new posts.still allowing the older posts to be used for research and making a new post a necessity for answers.
is there a place on here to make suggestions for changes?

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/suggest/

Whoa, jillibean...you give IVillage a choice and they'll be the ones to decide the date of locking a thread. One of those "be careful what you wish for" thingys.

The gal I emailed moved off to Asheville long ago and wrote me from there. I just wanted to give her some plants.

i looked & did suggest on the link that trianglejohn posted-doesnt sound like the really look at the forum so much. oh well. i do see what ya mean about the careful what ya wish for though-

It's not so easy to just do a quick search anymore. A lot of the threads are broken, after many repairs to GW. You can still pull some up via Google, so that may be why.