Do you delete old threads

Discussion in 'Managing Your Online Community' started by Graeme, Aug 26, 2009.

  1. Graeme

    Graeme Newcomer

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    Do you delete old and dormant threads or leave them open?

    IMO any thread must be good as it adds content as well as makes the forum appear busy.

    What do you think?
     
  2. Wayne Luke

    Wayne Luke Regular Member

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    No. There is no point to do so. What do you save a little storage space? Diskspace is pennies per gigabyte these days.
     
  3. David

    David Regular Member

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    Nope, I'd never delete any meaningful content either. Some forums I have blocked off like "testing" sections from bots and they get pruned regularlary but that doesn't cause a loss of content.
     
  4. twhiting9275

    twhiting9275 Regular Member

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    Absolutely not. I don't delete old users, either, as I find that annoying as all hell.
    Why would you delete anything unless it specifically called for it?
     
  5. Gibbs

    Gibbs Novice

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    I keep all of my forums. Any thread that has objectionable material or needs to be deleted then I move to an archive.
     
  6. Michael

    Michael Regular Member

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    We never delete old threads, those threads could be indexed by the search engines and driving traffic just because of the title. Deleting them would be foolish.
     
  7. cheat-master30

    cheat-master30 Grand Master

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    Nope, there's no point in ever deleting old topics. They're good for search engines, people still view them somewhat regularly, and they could be the reason a new member or ten actually joins a forum.
     
  8. kneel

    kneel Regular Member

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    what they said... :cool:
     
  9. Lynne

    Lynne Regular Member

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    We remove old threads from two specific forums to a Hibernation forum in Staff. Every once in a while I go through and get rid of threads in there that are older than three years old. There is really no reason to keep those around. And yeah, we prune old, inactive users, too. I try to keep the total users around the 80K mark.
     
  10. Ryan

    Ryan Regular Member

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    I don't delete anything. Just the spam advertisments.

    Everything else is moved out of view, I did prune my members once but only ones with 0 posts and had not been online in 8 months.
     
  11. BabyDesigner

    BabyDesigner Adept

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    Generally, no. BUT if the thread has no value any more, I will move it to my Archive that I have set up in the Admin private forum.
     
  12. Soliloquy

    Soliloquy Regular Member

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    No, I see no point in deleting perfectly good content. In fact if I stumbled across an old thread on a forum I'd think "Wow, this place has been around for a long time! There must be all sorts of knowledge here!"
     
  13. Rizzo

    Rizzo Regular Member

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    No, most of my old threads are good info, that if someone queries that same topic again, can be bought up again. Not getting rid of good stuff like that!
     
  14. kev

    kev Regular Member

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    No, I do not delete threads. And for my type of site, I see no reason to do so.

    But, on a gaming support forum that I am a member of, they prune threads once they reach a certain age and I think that is about 2 years old. That forum has hundreds of categories, and has a little over 1 million post. As updates are released to the game that fixes certain issues, there are no need in having threads on the issues that are no longer around. So I imagine that is why the threads are removed.
     
  15. Shadow

    Shadow Regular Member

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    Should never delete anything, if, for some reason you want to remove threads from the public simply create a hidden forum named trash can or something alike, and just store the unwanted/spam/bad threads there... ;-)
     
  16. danrak

    danrak Addict

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    Only thing remove are spam threads. Everything else I keep. I see little reason to delete them, you never know what traffic an old thread can bring in. Could be your next big user.
     
  17. Nick

    Nick Regular Member

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    I don't delete anything - even threads that should be removed. They are simply moved to a hidden forum.

    There is no need to lock or delete old or out-dated threads; it just takes away valuable content from your forum.

    Thread moved to Community Organization.
     
  18. Ak Worm

    Ak Worm Grand Master

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    I Dont Delete Threads, Just Move To Trash Forum.
     
  19. torque

    torque Regular Member

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    No I Just Move Them To
    A Hidden Trash Can That
    Normal Members Can Not
    See. This Way If They
    Are Somehow Needed At
    A Later Date We Can Get
    Them Back Easily.
     
  20. sTs

    sTs Newcomer

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    No. Not sure what a good argument to do so would be, either.
     

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