BuddyPress.org

I see lots of users resurrecting topics that are a year and even four years in age so I figured I would give you my opinion on why this is bad practice and why it is better practice to start a new topic instead.
1.) Most of the info in old topics has been debugged in current versions of BP and most likely has nothing to do with the problem you are facing so it is better to start a new topic instead of making replies to outdated info.

2.) A lot of the code snippets in old topics probably are not relevant anymore as BP has made many changes even within the last year and some code snippets that worked a year ago may not work anymore.

3.) BP no longer includes bbPress on install so if your using a current version of BP and you want forum functionality in your site then you will need to download bbPress. I have seen this come up in recent topics as well.

4.) Some plugins that are are several years old and have been resurrected from old topics have no more usefulness because some features within certain plugins are now built in to BP thanks to the awesome core devs and contributors so make sure to check out the codex for features here: http://codex.buddypress.org/buddypress-components-and-features/ before you download an old plugin that has features that may already be integrated with the current version of BP.

5.) If you see an old topics that is years old and not resolved don’t reply to it. Instead begin your new topic because your more likely to get current info and help.

6.) As of BP 1.7 BP is no longer reliant on a BP specific theme see: http://codex.buddypress.org/themes/theme-compatibility-1-7/a-quick-look-at-1-7-theme-compatibility/ I have seen this still brought up in topics and users are still asking where is bp-default theme. A lot has changed since BP 1.7.

I hope a few people will find this topic somewhat useful and if anyone else can add to why it is not good practice to reply to old threads then please do so.
Thanks,
bphelp