The effectiveness of archiving

[HovR]

So as most of you guys know, the past 2 forums we have been on (Only the older players will remember the first forum: Matchuu, pinpoynt, fluffy etc) have employed an archiving technique for inactive threads which have served their purpose.

This was so we could keep old posts, without other people "Necro'ing" them (Posting in old topics) - However it also takes a lot of work to archive threads. (30 seconds per topic, if you are fast - You can see how this would add up if you were archiving 50 topics.)

But is this the most efficient way of keeping old posts? Read below for the options we have, and then make a vote above.

Archiving:

Should we keep on archiving posts? This is where a topic will be locked, and moved to a special locked subforum called "Archives". This is very time consuming for staff.

No archiving - At all!

This option means we would just let posts settle to the bottom of their sub forums if they become inactive. They won't be locked or moved. To prevent people from bringing up old, unwanted topics, we would have a rule against doing so.

Lock inactive threads, but leave them in their subforum.

This is a sort of "Halfway house", if you like. It is pretty self explanatory. When a thread becomes old and unused, we will lock it, but keep it in its original subforum.

[SirDukem]

My vote is No archiving at all, for now. If res'ing old topics becomes an issue, I'd say we can re-visit these options. But I'd like to start the easy way and make it harder as we need to.

[mattchuu]

I agree with dukem, if someone necros and the topics already resolved then just lock it. If The forums start to get clustered that's when an archive might be nice

[zerg960]

Hm. If necro'ing becomes an issue, stead of making a rule, could just lock all the old threads.

I prefer doing nothing for now.


For this subforum, it's currently set to auto-prune topics after a certain time frame of inactivity. (I think 3 days).

[HovR]

Yeah, I'm aware of the auto-prune feature.. I dun really like it, because it deletes the posts.. (Unless you have set it up differently, in a way I am unaware of.)

[tempestfeir]

I voted for Lock old threads
It's a form of archiving while leaving the archived post in it's relevant forum. (Makes life easier associating the archived post to it's parent topic)

Is locking faster than Archiving? or same same?

[HovR]

Yeah, only locking a thread takes half the steps as full archiving.

[kieranchocian]

What about some auto-lock feature. I don't know if anyone on the server can do that, but it would work. I mean; once it reaches a month of inactivity, it locks the thread. The moderators could always unlock it if need be.

[zerg960]

Looks like to do it manually involves opening up the moderator control panel, selecting the subforum, clicking once for each topic you don't like, then doing 'Lock selected'.

Seems simple.


..But then again, so is automating this process :>

[Dakotah]

I think we should archive old threads only because it does help keep the forums up to date and clutter free. I know its hard work but you could always just lock a thread if it has some importance still only thoose that have no importance anymore like old towns, ended debates, and closed groups should really need archiving everything else should be ok imo.