Wide eyed little boy: “I found this thread on lions having sex. It followed me home. Can I keep it, ma? Can I? Can I?”
Grandma cleaning out attic: “Oh, deary me. I remember this thread I wrote from aught-eight on hawking loogies. It’s how grandpa and I met. I couldn’t throw this one out.”
Spunky little English chap: “All your base are belong to us? How delightfully droll! I simply must have it. I’ll love it ever so much.”
Four-assed troll: “GaaaH!!! ARG!! Good Thread! Post Thread! FARGARGALLAAAHHH! MY THREAD MY THREAD MY THREAD!!!”
Friends. Dopers. Countrymen. Lend me your keyboards. I wasn’t here during for the first year and a half of the SDMB’s existence on this server. So while I can’t speak with an absolute assurance, I will go out on a limb here. Back in 1999, there was no supernatural ability of the Chicago Reader to magically transmogrify your shit into roses. Things that were mundane and pointless will continue to be now. And things that were crap then, shall live on forever as crap in the here and now. Unless you let it die.
I know that the Admins are taking a Hoover to the system in the near future. I know that posts you made back then will be lost and gone forever. I know that you want to save some of them.
But the point of the cleaning is to actually clear up space on the server for the people posting today (i.e. EVERYONE READING THIS). If you continue to resurrect old threads for no other reason than you can’t bear to lose them (or worse yet, just because you can), you completely defeat the purpose of cleaning out the system.
If your post count goes down by 100, I promise you I’ll still respect you in the morning.
You forgot to mention that if the said threads are that important to people, they can always save them now onto their own PCs.
I nearly bumped an old Wally thread the other day because it was so damn funny and a lot of new members won’t have seen it - then I remembered that we’re only days away from the anniversary of Wally’s death and many members will be feeling the loss of Wally keenly at this time.
I just wish people would stop posting disclaimers along the lines of “I don’t want to re-open old wounds, but…”
It’s been rather irksome to have to start parsing threads by post date. It’s more irksome to see an interesting thread title, only to discover that it’s been completely played out.
All I can say is that this is absofuckinglutely ridiculuous.
Yes, there are some that have been posted that are nice to keep, like What did your grandfather do? over in IMHO. It’s been neat to read.
But give me a freakin’ break. I’m not a gossip, and I’m not interested in reading dirt from 2 years ago that has no relevance to my time on the boards. If I needed to, I would have searched it out by now.
Hear hear! At this point, I think the admins should just sweep asap, and announce it after the fact, before the amount of pure bumpage renders the housecleaning useless.
And in line with fighting ignorance, I think it would be nice if they’d do a weighted sweep. Prune MPSIMS and IMHO more aggressively, while GD and GQ last longer back in time–on the theory that the latter contain information, rather than simply entertaining, uplifting, whatnot conversation. The Pit’s somewhat more debateable, as there’s frequently a curious mix of debate with the rant.
UGH! Tell me about it. Dragging up interesting threads are one thing-like pranks, and stuff like that. Old fights and crap are only going to break open some wounds.
Granted, some of the more funny ones, or sentimental ones a nice. (Like, “What did your grandfather do?” Glad that one’s being saved.) But to really save old messy stupid threads? What for?
Hell - there was the first vegetarian thread I posted to. I have sentimental feelings about it, so what did I do? SAVED IT TO MY HARD DRIVE! It never occured to me to inflict the rest of the board with it. We’ve got many simular, more recent threads to admire, on the same topic. No one will miss that one (except for me, which is why I saved it!)
Now, the Wally threads, the funny ones. I wish they were saved. Or, at least tell me where they are. I started getting really active on this board just around Jan 200 (late Dec 1999) so I know I missed a lot. Of course, if he started them, I can search for them that way. OK, that’s what I’ll do…
::going off to search for old Wally threads to save on my HD::
While I agree that people can go find and save for themselves whatever they want to keep, the fact of the matter is that what’s been bumped so far is insignificant compared the 1999 total # of posts. And those who are bumping are doing so at Ed’s invitation.
I also note that Ed commented that they don’t expect it to help that much, anyway.
Earlier this evening a question was posed in GQ that I remembered having been answered early on in this board’s life. When I searched for it I came to realize it had disappearedd in the first pruning. Oh well, look up the info again.
You knew a '99 poster would appear in this thread eventually (on preview I see yosemitebabe has arrived as well).
And this one, though it does get hijacked partway in: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=21700
Now that I’m going down memory lane on this board, I am staring to think that some of his threads should be bumped, personally. I think it’ll be a nice remembrance of him.
I joined this board in September 1999, but really didn’t start to become active until December. So, I wouldn’t even know how to ferret out the really good Wally threads prior to 2000. There were about 1500 threads that came up in search when I looked. Just too overwhelming, and I have a slow connection. If there are some other gems, could someone post a link here, or (if you think it would be appropriate) bump the thread?
Just want to throw my voice in here. I personally don’t care if these old threads are deleted or not, so I’m not all torn up if somebody wants to save them, but it does annoy me a little bit to see a thread I’ve never seen before, read it, then see that most of the thread is from 1999 and there’s a post at the end saying “I’m bumping this thread because threads about tiddlywinks shouldn’t be deleted”, or “A thread by poster X should be saved.” It just seems to me that a lot of these threads that are being bumped are being bumped out of sentiment, and that they really serve no purpose.
Screw it. Dump 'em. Well, most of them. This isn’t the fucking Library of Congress, folks. It’s a message board, a technological step above a chalk board. Should something be lost in the name of organization and a little better server speed, then bring on the ash can.
If you want something saved for posterity, grab a typewriter and start banging on the keys.
