FalcFans Forums

I know some might object but I'm thinking about auto-pruning the Falcons Huddle forum, meaning that posts from several years ago will automatically be deleted after a certain period of time. I'm thinking about making that period either 2 or 2.5 years, which still leaves the vast majority of the forums archives intact, but I figure stuff from 2005 and before really has no real place anymore. I think I'll only do it for the Falcons Huddle since the other forums really aren't too big. But there's like 99 pages of posts for the main forum, and I seriously doubt anybody is really spending too much free time going through many of them.

This is just to keep the forum's database from being aggregiously huge. I don't think it's going to affect people's post counts.

Any strong objections?

I object, for what it's worth. I am one of those who like to go back and read the old posts. And as far as pure principle goes, i just hate erasing history. And that is what it is ...a historical record. But then again, with only about 15-20 active members, it really isn't a big deal. If it doesn't affect any of the storage requirements, then i say leave it there. If it costs you more, then off with the head.

I agree.

Considering that there were recent issues with the size constraints, it is a practical move. I say go ahead, 2 years is very reasonable.

The written word doesn't eat up so much bandwidth...it is the bells and whistles that people attatch to their sig, or avatar. I can't believe that 3-4 mb's of written word would be that big of an issue. And it is a bit strange that the site crashed during a time there was very little going on, as opposed to during the season when we had 30 people in the chat room and 250 posts a day. In fact , when you compare this to other forums, there is very little going on concerning membership activity. The homepage appears to be taking up quite a bit of bandwidth as well. I stand by my comments that the historical record is very important, especially 2005-2007...i just hate seeing words being flushed. I am a member of many different forums, and i have never seen it become an issue.

BB is correct that even if I deleted the roughly 1000 or so posts that I intend to, it's barely a splash in the water in terms of the overall size of the database, and it's not going to make a ton of difference. The entire database for the forums are roughly 100 megs, and a 1000 or so posts may be 2 and probably no more tahn 3 megs. And deleting the posts

But in truth, this site's membership didn't really take off until 2006, and no slight towards the people that had posted here well before then, but it's not as if it was a ton of stuff going on here in 2005 and before...IMO.

And while it's nice to have the archive of posts from 4 or 5 years ago, I don't think it really enhances the forums, nor in their absence does it really diminish them.

It's not really going to help prevent the problems this site has had in the recent past. I'm just wanting to do it because it puts a pseudo-cap on the size of the database, and if/when there is a future problem I feel a bit more comfortable in addressing those problems, particularly restoring the database if/when such an issue arises in the future. And while this database already is huge at 100 megs, the larger it is the harder it is to fix when problems occur. And while it hasn't been a major obstacle up to now, it's possible it could become so in the future.

At least to me, retaining 2.5-3 years of archived posts is a substantial amount IMO. I don't know of many websites besides newspapers that have archives that deep.

Does the lack of more responses indicate the majority of the rest of the board doesn't care?

All i can do is voice my opinion. It is rather normal for americans to be apathetic concerning such matters of historical significance.

Taking down one blinking sig or avatar would free up 3 times the space that purging a few years of posts would achieve.

It doesn't matter to me Pudge. It's your sandbox. That being said, it is fun to go back and look at the old posts......