Pruning to speed things up?

[Dimwhit]

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.

 

[der_kluge]

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.

 

[Dimwhit]

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.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

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...

 

[Umbran]

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?

 

[Dimwhit]

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.

 

[Morrus]

Inactive accounts don't make any difference at all, apart from taking up a (very small) amount of space on the server.

Old threads would make a difference, but it's a real shame to delete them; I know I often search for and reads old threads.

The best way to improve speed is to upgrade the server, which is planned.

 

[LightPhoenix]

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.

 

[Creamsteak]

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.

 

[Gnarlo]

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' ).