What's so wrong about replying to a slightly old post?

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Oh, so she did. Well you're both right.

What do you mean ''social norm''? Try looking at the comments given for videos on Youtube - they're always bickering or putting something nasty against what someone else said. I don't try to do that, and I don't do it to every post I see either, and I don't want a bickering sort of argument anyway. It's silly. Not all arguments involve bickering horribly - it's more of a debate or something like that. Once I started a thread on ''feeling ashamed of having Autism'', and I knew that those who don't feel ashamed of it would go on the thread and say, ''oh stop whining about it and get a life'', which upsets some of us, so first I wrote a warning for those who are against people feeling ashamed to not to put things against those who do feel ashamed, but I still said to feel free to write your own opinion without hurting other people's feelings. I made it as a thread for adults to confide with eachother over the parts of AS what they wish they could do without.

I don't like to argue, and if arguing does start then I stop posting on that particular thread. Like once when I read ''Autistics are ugly'', or some other offensive stereotype like that, and I just had to give my opinion that Autistics aren't ugly and that it is an offensive stereotype. I wasn't going against anything to start bickering because I hate bickering. I'm a sensitive person.

If you have a look at a lot of my posts you might find that almost all of them aren't intended bickering made by me.

bumping old threads gives us newbies a chance to horn-in also

However, it is quite annoying for the ones who have been around a little bit longer, so I'd advise n00bs not to do it.
Makes a bad first impression.
I automatically think "annoying" when witnessing the resurrection of a thread performed by a n00b.

As the 51st most prolific poster out of 48,000+ members I don't think you qualify as a n00b anymore

Everyone has a slightly different rule of thumb for it, but here is mine:

If your post on an old thread would be to give the OP advice, don't bother. Once a month has passed the situation is likely to have changed and giving advice is too old and cold to be of any use to anyone.

If the thread had arguments or flaming in it, we don't want to see it again. Best not to read it or form an opinion that makes you want to post. If it's old and cold enough, you raise the points of interest in a new thread, as LeagueGirl indicated. I realize that this technically violates the rules, but the rule is meant to keep people from spamming, or spreading a flame war. It is not meant to keep people from revisiting a topic from a new perspective more than a year later. If it hasn't been very long, accept that the discussion may be raw and should be left alone.

If the post is simply old, as in over a year old, people may get confused when it comes back so, again, best to leave it alone.

The last I think is a key issue for people: they get confused by the old threads, and often reply as if it's new, only to discover they had replied a year ago. After doing that they feel they've wasted their time and now they are annoyed.

But if a thread involves lots of detailed and interesting information that was shared in an intelligent manner and that would be a royal pain to reinvent ... it might be OK bring it back. You will still have the issue of confusing people, but at least you'll have a good reason for it. In fact, I would state that reason in your post that brings it back. It's really weird to read a conversation as if it is in real time when there are months or years between posts. So bridging that helps ease things. Or, perhaps better yet, start a new thread and link it back to the old one.

I have learned to check the dates on posts when I reply to a thread because I hate it when I make a good reply and then find out the thread was posted couple years ago and that the OP hadn't been back since then. I then feel pissed about it because I had wasted my time making a good reply. But I learned to check the dates on the posts and it annoys me when people make replies to a post that was made by a user who hadn't been back in two years.

Quite a few times here have I seen old threads get bumped and a flame war breaks out in it because of a post someone made in 2008 and new people who joined after 2009 got upset with that post. Then fore I knew it, the thread had been removed while I was reading it while I was enjoying the good drama I was reading. And the user hadn't even been back in months and people were replying angrily to that user. I really wish people would check the dates on the posts and make sure the user still visits the forum by checking their profile before making a reply. If they haven't made a post in months or in over a year, best to leave it alone because there is a chance they won't ever read it and if they do ever return, high chance the thread be buried and them finding the thread and reading it is very slim.

See bolded text. How do you determine "not too old"?

When it's not months old like five months or so.

What if it's something that is of interest that just happens not to have been discussed much lately?

It's not all black and white. If you see an old random thread like asking for your age or location or where you were born or if you ever been arrested or not, or if it's some game thread or a quiz thread where you post your test results, that is okay to bump. It's just random and pointless, not some discussion so it wouldn't matter if the OP will never see your post nor other repliers.

And to answer your question, I don't know. I need an example to understand it better.

If the thread is old, and I really want to make a post, I'm not really writing just for the OP. I just write just for anyone to read. Sometimes I see a thread discussing something what I've never heard of, and so I like to read through then loads of words start popping into my head, making m really want to write a reply. Like when I first saw a thread entitled William's Syndrome (I saw this 2 days ago), and I never, ever heard of the syndrome until 2 days ago when I saw that thread. I found it interesting, and I read through the other posts what people had put. Then I looked at the date and it was, like, 2007, so I thought, ''f**k sake!'' and I searched the forum for other threads about this what might be more new, but there wasn't. There were a few other threads on William's Syndrome, but they were all from 2007 or 2008 too, and I didn't want to start a new thread on that because there were loads of others and I didn't know if people were like, ''but we've been through that 3 years ago - who wants to go through it again!''

Still, never mind.

that's AFAIC