Pruning to speed things up?

[LightPhoenix]

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.