In an effort to clean up the board a bit, free up some server space and hopefully make things run a bit faster here, I will be going back and cleaning out posts from back when we first started.
This means two things :
1 : Your post count may go down. Please don’t slit your wrists, this is not the end of the world. In fact, this will be your chance to say “Well, I had 4000 posts until that a-hole Euty went and deleted most of them!”
2 : If there are any threads that you have an emotional attachment to, or feel should be kept for any reason, you need to inform me by e-mail at Eutychus55@worldnet.att.net. Please don’t let me know about current threads, but only threads at least a year old, as I won’t be getting to the current ones for quite a while.
I’ll be doing this during the early morning hours so hopefully this activity won’t bog down the server during peak activity times. Also, since I’ll probably only be able to do a handful a day, it will largely be a matter of “running as fast as you can to stay in the same place.” But it will be an ongoing project, so please keep me informed.
I assume this concerns only MPSIMS threads and the other fora will be unaffected for now. Could you please confirm that for me before I go on a mad archiving spree?
I bet you could just do a search for “Post count party” and delete all of those that occurred before last week- forget last year. Those threads are sometimes fun, but there is never anything of consequence in them and I don’t think anyone ever searches for something that was once said in a PCP. IOW, I don’t think anyone would miss them if they were all gone. That alone would clean up a lot. Then you could take the way-back machine to the long long ago and start on those oldies.
Just my thoughts… (which are never usually any good, and almost never coherent)
Since there seems to be some emotion riding on this topic, I’ll only say this once.
There is no poster that is going to be inviolate.
When I go through threads, I’m going to be looking at the entire tenor of the thread, not for specific posts by specific posters. Most times, it will be the OP that decides it for me. It’s not worth keeping a 357 post thread because of a single worthwhile post somewhere on page 3. To be honest, I doubt, because of the type of forum this is, that there will be much that is saved. I’m figuring about a 5/95% baby/bathwater ratio. There are some jewels out there, but this isn’t a mining expedition. As I said earlier, if there are threads (not posts) that you feel strongly about, e-mail me about it. I won’t guaruntee that we’ll keep it, but I will take that into consideration.
If you feel this is insensitive, take it to the Pit.
And yes, Tymp, I will only be working this specific forum.
If my post count goes down, I will cease to exist!
But (sigh) ok…I understand. I think this is the only forum in which I don’t do a ton a posting (not that I am burning up the server in ANY of them) so blast away, O fearless Mod!
Hey Euty? A couple of weeks ago, Tuba and Lynn asked this, and marked some threads that should NOT be deleted, because people are linking to them from their personal sites. (Like mine.) Are those still going to stay in place?
Thank you for the confirmation, oh great and even-tempered Eutychus55!
No worries, Silky. If you scroll up a bit, you’ll see that this will be the pruning of old threads. You’ve just registered so you’re posts won’t be affected.
As a suggestion for avoiding the deletion of posts in the future, I recommend that every single one of your posts be so brilliant and witty that no one would dream of removing the glory of your words from the world.
Of course, I know nothing about wit and brilliance, so you’re on your own at this point.
Random, but vaguely related thought: How freakin’ cool would it be to have a negative post count?!
I’m sure this is nothing that the moderator’s haven’t covered before but I’ll throw it out anyway, just in case.
Can you do any kind of search for, say, all threads older than a year with less than 15 posts? And then just mass delete them? The fact that it is in MPSIMS, by definition means it is mundane or pointless, so if it had less than less than 15 posts it must have been really mundane or pointless. I know that one Guy Stuff thread equals a hundred of these dinky ones, but at least they would require any individual attention.
Of course, this assumes you have that kind of search ability and aren’t just going to threadID=1 and reviewing then thredID=2 and reviewing.
If that is the way you are having to do this, Euty, you have my sympathies (actually, you have my sympathies anyway, this kind of work really sucks).
…any thread that Perfect Master Cecil Adams posts to, should be preserved.
There are only about 50-55 such threads at present (in all forums), so hopefully it should be easy to keep them out of harm’s way.
Other than that, I concur with “no inviolate posters.”
Also (and this does apply to MPSIMS), if it’s been recognized in Threadspotting, it should be preserved, IMO.
Euty, I’d like to second obfusc’s suggestion for you to use in your own cleaning-up of the old threads: kill anything with a post count of less than X without even looking (I’d say you could go with something like X=25 instead of 15), and then use your own judgment on the rest. Less work for you, and a quicker start in cleaning out the underbrush.
I concur with your 5/95 estimate of the wheat/chaff ratio; in fact, I’d be surprised if as many as 5% of the threads were really worth saving.
And thanks for taking this on. Housecleaning of this sort isn’t exactly fun, I know.
Hmm, maybe you’ll delete all of me, and I’ll be zeroed, and not exist on any lists, no birth records, and I could go on a mad hacking spree. Not of you guys of course. Anyone who would zero me is okay in my book…
