Reviving a several year old thread is actually not a direct result of using the search feature, nice try though.

It is pretty easy to see the post time stamps, last I checked each post hast one. Seeing that and knowing a thread has not been active in a while is a good queue to check out the profile of the poster you are interested in interacting with and seeing when they last logged in. I’d say that more often than not, people who have not logged in for over a year will not be returning.