There was a recent discussion on that other site about this recently. Although several posters were adamant that the 7000 day teaching is no longer there, which is the case, it is clear that the vague way this is presented leaves some at best confused and some old timers still sure 7000 and 49000 are special numbers in the context of the JW view of creation.
The reference is here
w87 1/1 QFR
Second, a study of the fulfillment of Bible prophecy and of our location in the stream of time strongly indicate that each of the creative days (Genesis, chapter 1) is 7,000 years long. It is understood that Christ’s reign of a thousand years will bring to a close God’s 7,000-year ‘rest day,’ the last ‘day’ of the creative week. (Revelation 20:6; Genesis 2:2, 3) Based on this reasoning, the entire creative week would be 49,000 years long.
this also....
g88 12/8 What Does Genesis Really Say
Was each one of those six days a literal 24-hour day? That is not what Genesis says. The word “day” in the Hebrew language (the language in which Genesis was written) can mean long periods of time, even thousands of years. (Compare Psalm 90:4; Genesis 2:4.) For example, “the seventh day” in which we now live is thousands of years long. (Genesis 2:2, 3) Hence, the evidence shows that the entire period of six days should be viewed as tens of thousands of years long.
it-1 - Creation p545
That a day can be longer than 24 hours is indicated by Genesis 2:4, which speaks of all the creative periods as one “day.” Also indicative of this is Peter’s inspired observation that “one day is with Jehovah as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.” (2Pe 3:8) Ascribing not just 24 hours but a longer period of time, thousands of years, to each of the creative days better harmonizes with the evidence found in the earth itself.
rs 125-126
But is it reasonable to believe that everything on this earth was created in six days?
There are some religious groups that teach that God created everything in six 24-hour days. But that is not what the Bible says.
Genesis 1:3-31 tells how God prepared the already existing earth for human habitation. It says that this was done during a period of six days, but it does not say that these were 24-hour days. It is not unusual for a person to refer to his “grandfather’s day,” meaning that one’s entire lifetime. So, too, the Bible often uses the term “day” to describe an extended period of time. (Compare 2 Peter 3:8.) Thus the ‘days’ of Genesis chapter 1 could reasonably be thousands of years long.
rs - 88
Was all physical creation accomplished in just six days sometime within the past 6,000 to 10,000 years?
The facts disagree with such a conclusion: (1) Light from the Andromeda nebula can be seen on a clear night in the northern hemisphere. It takes about 2,000,000 years for that light to reach the earth, indicating that the universe must be at least millions of years old. (2) End products of radioactive decay in rocks in the earth testify that some rock formations have been undisturbed for billions of years.
Genesis 1:3-31 is not discussing the original creation of matter or of the heavenly bodies. It describes the preparation of the already existing earth for human habitation. This included creation of the basic kinds of vegetation, marine life, flying creatures, land animals, and the first human pair. All of this is said to have been done within a period of six “days.” However, the Hebrew word translated “day” has a variety of meanings, including ‘a long time; the time covering an extraordinary event.’ (Old Testament Word Studies, Grand Rapids, Mich.; 1978, W. Wilson, p. 109) The term used allows for the thought that each “day” could have been thousands of years in length.
ba 5
Similarly, religious fundamentalists today distort the Bible when they insist that the earth was created in six 24-hour days. (Genesis 1:3-31) Such a view agrees neither with science nor with the Bible. In the Bible, as in everyday speech, the word “day” is a flexible term, expressing units of time of varying lengths. At Genesis 2:4, all six creative days are referred to as one all-embracing “day.” The Hebrew word translated “day” in the Bible can simply mean “a long time.”6 So, there is no Biblical reason to insist that the days of creation were 24 hours each. By teaching otherwise, fundamentalists misrepresent the Bible.—See also 2 Peter 3:8.
and so.. until 2002.