# 1,953 Subscribed threads! **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [July 10, 2008, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-953-subscribed-threads/456034 "2008-07-10T20:17:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2008, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-953-subscribed-threads/456034/1 "2008-07-10T20:17:09Z")
You know what would be nice? A button to discard older subscribed threads, maybe older than 6 months or so. I know I’m not going to manually do it. Might even save some CPU and storage on the HampsterServer(s). 😉 ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2008, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-953-subscribed-threads/456034/2 "2008-07-10T20:54:40Z")
Funny…I just went through today and deleted (manually) about four pages worth of old threads. I might need to change my settings now that we have search again… ---
**Author:** ![Hampshire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hampshire/32/4887_2.png) [@Hampshire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hampshire)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2008, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-953-subscribed-threads/456034/3 "2008-07-10T20:54:51Z")
Seconded. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2008, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-953-subscribed-threads/456034/4 "2008-07-11T00:15:22Z")
Why? I like to keep my subscriptions. I’ve participated in and subscribed to 2448 threads so far (make that 2449). Once in a while I look back through some interesting old threads for fun. I’d really hate it if there were a button that automatically unsubscribed me, which I might accidentally click. Why don’t you want to keep your old threads anyway? ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2008, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-953-subscribed-threads/456034/5 "2008-07-11T01:01:17Z")
Storing a thread subscription should only require two bites, one for the thread ID and one for the user ID. I’m subscribed to about 8000 threads right now. If we assume that each of 5000 very active members are subscribed to about that many, the total storage needed is about 76 MB. That’s just not an onerous storage requirement, even if you throw in indices on both fields. The total processing power needed to handle those is pretty low. Any time a user posts to a thread, you have to look up all the subscribers and send them email, and any time you query for all your subscriptions you have to look up all the threads, but otherwise there’s nothing doing. The scheduled script to clear out old subscriptions would very likely require more processing power than just leaving them alone. ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2008, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-953-subscribed-threads/456034/6 "2008-07-11T03:20:40Z")
[QUOTE=ultrafilter] Storing a thread subscription should only require two bites, one for the thread ID and one for the user ID. [/QUOTE] Not that it makes a huge difference to your point, but thread and user IDs must take up more than a byte, considering how many there are of each (more than 256). I imagine the natural thing to do is store them as a 32-bit word each, upping your computed costs by a factor of 4. ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2008, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-953-subscribed-threads/456034/7 "2008-07-11T03:29:50Z")
Actually, what I might like, come to think of it (not that it’s gonna happen), would be the ability to auto-resubscribe to all the threads I’ve posted in. I always think “I should clear up all this clutter” for some irrational reason, and thus unsubscribing from threads once activity dies down a bit, but it would be interesting to see what I’ve missed by doing so… ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2008, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-953-subscribed-threads/456034/8 "2008-07-11T04:17:52Z")
[QUOTE=Indistinguishable] Not that it makes a huge difference to your point, but thread and user IDs must take up more than a byte, considering how many there are of each (more than 256). I imagine the natural thing to do is store them as a 32-bit word each, upping your computed costs by a factor of 4. [/QUOTE] :smack: ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2008, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-953-subscribed-threads/456034/9 "2008-07-11T13:22:50Z")
Well I just wanted to suggest this, I know the mods don’t like zombie threads anyway so why stay subscribed to threads that are years old? I like to keep a neat digital house.