Do you ever clean up or remove older posts? What’s your take on forums that regularly prune content?

 

 

And what about forums with a public archive section filled with locked threads—do you think it adds value, or does it feel like a digital graveyard?

I'd never prune posts that are old. They always serve a purpose and it could well be a new potential member through organic search.

 

Same with an archive section. Archive sections are usually used for old, outdated topics or old services in case of Administrata. They serve the purpose to see what we've done.

I tended to archive the churn stuff - you know, the off topic stuff that is years old, isn't going anywhere, isn't likely to bring in new people, but I'd generally not delete it, as opposed to make a separate board with lower focus than the main boards for such things.

I never did this sort of thing.

 

I suppose if one of my communities got very large and a lot of inactive posts being archived could help with resource consumption levels, I'd entertain the idea of it.

I never did and I never will. Every post on the forum is valuable (except spam and trolling). Even old threads are kept unlocked because you never know who might write there.

I can't see any purpose for doing this. The data costs for storing old threads in your database are minimal. Sure, maybe back in the day when disc space was a premium, but there benefits of that old data being available to search engines far outweighs any savings you may make from pruning.

I've never done this unless you count archiving all the "general" topics on my forum into the Trash Can. We started by creating a new board for general discussions and then moved them back to my resource board, which mostly had a fresh start for general discussions. I think separating the forums into two different boards was a mistake.

 

I like to keep most old topics available and I don't mind users bumping them instead of creating a topic about the same subject unless their bump is irrelevant.

I used to do this (10+ years ago) and I'm not proud of it, but I did. For me it was more of a clutter feeling than anything else. I felt like if my forum had too many pages it may be overwhelming to some people. So, at that time I would prune posts.

 

 

Now I wouldn't do it unless it was spam. I now understand more about forums and know that every post counts =)

I usually chuck old or irrelevant threads in the Archive section of my forum (but it's viewable to members only). Old news or things that don't matter to the forum anymore (such as when there was a development thread for the Minimal skin it used to have) are such examples.