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Does this message board ever get pruned? Both for posts and members? I was really bored at work (as usual) so I thought I'd check out the member list. There are 13,394 members. Of those, roughly 4000 have never made a post. Another 1700 or so have made 1 single post, and another 1000 or so have only made 2. I wonder how old some of these accounts are.
I wonder if it would speed things up to delete old accounts. And not only that, but to delete threads and posts older than a certain age. I'm pretty sure you can go back to a post from 2 or 3 years ago, but I'm not sure. I'm thinking anything older than 6 to 12 months could probably be removed.
Just some thoughts. I know it looks good to show so many registered users and posts, but I wonder if trimmng the database could help speed things up a bit. Though lately, things have seemed to improve a bit.
I'm hungry. I want a cookie...
edit: in re-reading the title, I should point out that No, I don't have a constipation problem.
__________________ All right, all right, I apologize. I'm really, really sorry. I apologize unreservedly. I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact and was in no way fair comment, and was motivated purely by malice, and I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.
Last edited by Dimwhit; 12th November 2003 at 08:43 PM..
I imagine that ENWorld is comprised of at least 50% pure lurkers. So, pruning what could be perceived to be inactive accounts, might in fact be active. I guess if you went by their last sign-on date, that might be fairly accurate. Given the amount of rebuilds the board has gone through in the last several years, even that might not be old enough. I wouldn't want to wax anyone unless they hadn't signed on in say, 2 years or more.
I imagine that ENWorld is comprised of at least 50% pure lurkers. So, pruning what could be perceived to be inactive accounts, might in fact be active. I guess if you went by their last sign-on date, that might be fairly accurate. Given the amount of rebuilds the board has gone through in the last several years, even that might not be old enough. I wouldn't want to wax anyone unless they hadn't signed on in say, 2 years or more.
True, but do lurkers bother to register on the boards? I lurked for a year before ever registering an account.
Like I said, just a thought. I think, like you mentioned, it would be best to go based on when the account was last active. But I wouldn't be so generous to allow 2 years. If someone has zero posts and hasn't logged on in nearly a year...well, they could always re-register.
__________________ All right, all right, I apologize. I'm really, really sorry. I apologize unreservedly. I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact and was in no way fair comment, and was motivated purely by malice, and I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.
I wonder if it would speed things up to delete old accounts. And not only that, but to delete threads and posts older than a certain age. I'm pretty sure you can go back to a post from 2 or 3 years ago, but I'm not sure. I'm thinking anything older than 6 to 12 months could probably be removed.
I wouldn't delete older posts. I have many older threads bookmarked that I refer back to fairly regularly, and older threads do get linked pretty regularly in current discussions. And then there is the whole post-count thing, and if old posts start getting deleted, some people (who all know post count means nothing) might not like it...
Some guru might know better, but I don't think inactive members would cause much slowdown. Slowdowns happen when database information needs to be referenced. Cropping out database references you don't need would speed things up. Inactive accounts aren't causing extra database references, are they?
Some guru might know better, but I don't think inactive members would cause much slowdown. Slowdowns happen when database information needs to be referenced. Cropping out database references you don't need would speed things up. Inactive accounts aren't causing extra database references, are they?
Maybe not, except with the memberlist gets accessed. I would think old threads would cause a bigger slowdown for when people do searches. But really, I'm just guessing. There is some fat on the forums that could be trimmed.
However, Cthulhu's Librarian has a good point about not deleting the older posts, so my idea is probably moot.
__________________ All right, all right, I apologize. I'm really, really sorry. I apologize unreservedly. I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact and was in no way fair comment, and was motivated purely by malice, and I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.
You could do some sort of archive of the older pages, right? A smaller database would reduce access times, and you could set up a searchable archive with older posts, and periodically move posts older than a certain time to the archive.
Mind you, I have no lcue how exactly to do that, but I'm sure someone more tech-savvy than me does.
Do you realize how long it would take to prune GD of useless threads? You can't just arbitrate that any thread older than 12 months should be deleted, you have to examine each one. If the boards were super super fast for me (like if I was on the machine right now) it would still take forever.
__________________ Red Hand of Doom: IC I, IC II, OOC, RG
Another one in the please don't prune camp. A lot of times a search on a subject will give me a good dozen threads a year or more old that answer my questions or give me a lot of fresh perspectives (yeah, I know the irony of 'year or more old' and 'fresh perspectives' ).
__________________ /gnarlo! BATGNOME Member 12.5; Member 13 of G.A.G.
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Do you realize how long it would take to prune GD of useless threads? You can't just arbitrate that any thread older than 12 months should be deleted, you have to examine each one. If the boards were super super fast for me (like if I was on the machine right now) it would still take forever.
Erm, I really don't see why exactly you can't say that any thread that hasn't been posted to in twelve months be "deleted". Though, I did in fact say moved to an archive, which I know other sites have done. That's beside the point though.
If it's a software issue with this version of the boards, then forgive me, I didn't know.
Otherwise - chances are if a thread hasn't been posted to in twelve months, it's never going to be posted to again. And I'm not talking "useless" threads, I'm talking all threads. That's the purpose of an archive, I thought. Reduce the database size for faster access times. Again, if that's a software misconception on my part, please correct me.
If I had to make a guess, I would say out of every post in GD alone, maybe 90% of them are to posts that under two months old, if they're not new posts. I would guess 99% of them are to posts under six months. I think that keeping every post under a year old is more than satisfactory to retain any information that people may still be interested in. And again, I suggested an archive - so all of the threads removed would still be accessable. I doubt the archive would get too much traffic at all, except for the first month or two when people have the nostalgia of posts they made two years ago.
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