Question:
 

I have recently been told that many of the other GLO forums prune the older sites every now & again. What I was interested in knowing is:

1) Do you think we should prune the old threads?

2) If so, how old is old?

2a) After a year?
2b) After two years?
2c) After three years?

I think it is a very good idea. Another forum I visit (which is for school, so slightly more regulated) deletes entire sub-forums if no one has posted a new thread in them in a year. For here on our ADPI forum on GC- I think a year or two worths of threads is plenty to keep around.

I definately agree with "pruning". Our last page in our forum is back to 2001. Eek. I'd say anything 2004 and older (03,02,01) be deleted.

I tend to use the search function quite a bit when I'm looking for information that was discussing in an old thread. I'd be afraid that some of the useful information we have discussed in old threads would be lost as a result.

So I would have to say no. I am on boards that old messages get prunned but its primarily because of how the board is set up. If we dont have any space restrictions I dont see what the harm is in keep old threads. Plus its always kinda cool to go back and see what you wrote a few years back.

Let me add another option: Are there threads which should be pruned?

I say this because sometimes I'll go back to old threads, too.

I would say threads like "hi I'm new here" or threads that are bragging about a specific school. I'd be willing to go through the threads to help you.

I agree with Noosh that there are probably some important threads way back but I would say 75% of them need to be "pruned" because no on "really cares" (for lack of a better word phrase to use).

What is the purpose of pruning? What kind of threads would you target? Or is it pruning just to prune?

I don't know much about computers or the server hosting GC, but wouldn't we (GC moderators and such) have to go through and "clean out" threads and forums? Eventually you would have too much "stuff".

Can't a server only hold a certain about of "stuff"?

(I ask because I seriously don't know)

Sorry for crashing, but yeah there is a limit to the amount of data a server can hold, however if John is looking at allowing avatars we're in no danger of filling it up. I'd guess that memory is getting cheaper faster than GC can fill it up :)

I agree that the "hi, i'm new here" threads ought to be pruned. I don't know if there is a whole lot of value in a 6 year old thread, but I don't know if there is anything to be gained by deleting it. If there's no benefit to pruning, and I'm sure it will take some time to do, then I say to let old threads stay. If there are any duplicated threads, those could either be combined or pruned.

I don't think we need to prune old threads... that sounds like a lot of wasted time and effort. If there are issues with threads, they are dealt with as they happen by the mods.

I don't think it's really issues with threads but it is cleaning up our forum so that we don't have 82 pages of threads, especially since quite a few of them are "hi I'm new here", which after a while no one is going to look at again.

Because you're right if there is an issue with a thread it is handeled right then.

Like I said it is more cleaning up our forum because I guess a lot of other forums do it.