is pruning/re-calibration ever necessary

[md16185]

Theysay everything put online is online forever... Is there any point in time, that older posts should be retired
or pruned?

 

[CyberFreak]

I personally don't think of any reason why things especially forums should be pruned. Most things are still relevant and can provide help to other people or be of interest to other people. Sometimes though it may be good to clear old posts for example if your forums database is so big that your host moans. If that happens though you should really find a better host.

 

[ℓєσ gнσѕт]

Find a better host, or split your database and keep it backed up somewhere. I think i'd get tired of the long backup times before i'd let a host complain to me honestly ~lol~

I don't see why you'd need to, but some people like to.

 

[tagalong]

On my forum, I do prune occasionally. I have news and legislative alerts which are time sensitive, so unless there's a worthwhile discussion in the thread, there's no reason to keep them after a while. But on most forums, it's probably not needed. If they do have interesting discussion, they'll get moved to an archive section of the board.

 

[Jasonp]

On my forum, I do prune occasionally. I have news and legislative alerts which are time sensitive, so unless there's a worthwhile discussion in the thread, there's no reason to keep them after a while. But on most forums, it's probably not needed. If they do have interesting discussion, they'll get moved to an archive section of the board.

I would archive old news instead of pruning 🙂

 

[Rich Edmonds]

Archive old news, keep all topics and posts in the forums, as it makes the forums look more active through it's lifespan. Cutting posts away is like cutting your forum history, in effect. I'd prune the member base however, just to keep the post:member ratio somewhat interesting.

 

[tagalong]

Archive old news, keep all topics and posts in the forums, as it makes the forums look more active through it's lifespan. Cutting posts away is like cutting your forum history, in effect. I'd prune the member base however, just to keep the post:member ratio somewhat interesting.

Point taken. -🙂-

I still prefer pruning some of them as legislative alerts become irrelevant after time. The bill either passes, gets defeated or dies. At that point the alert thread can be updated and moved to news instead of alerts. After a while though it becomes unnecessary and ends up cluttering the board. A search for BSL for example will bring up a few posts of legislative alerts, a few posts with interesting information regarding BSL and a lot of posts of past alerts that have been passed, defeated or died. By pruning out the last group it reduces the clutter and makes it easier to find what's worth finding.

Keeping the forums active is great for most forums. This one though, I'm more interested in keeping it clean and easy. I might change my mind later, if I get more members and it develops into a community, I'll see what the members like.

 

[thedudeman]

I never prune topics, because to be honest, my forum isn't super-huge, and it's nice to have all the topics there instead of them getting erased after however long.

 

[Kingmush]

I don't see the point in pruning. I know that on at least SMF, I've pruned accidentally before and I lost pretty much 10K of posts that I couldn't get back. Terrible option.