Folks-

It seems to me that not every thread deserves to live forever.

Flame wars can do positive harm for as long as they exist; "Season's Greetings" threads--though positive, community builders--are irrelevant in a month; reviews of versions-old software fill a database and clog search results.

In the forum software that I started with, messages would die a natural death--they would "scroll", be automatically perged from the database after a time (actually the database would hold a fixed number of messages--for instance, 5000).

A forum manager had to act affirmatively to capture interesting threads and archive them. This system had some weaknesses--one could, through inattention, miss the beginning of what became interesting threads. But, a lot of drek got cleaned out painlessly.

In the current crop of forum software, it seems that everything lives forever. To make messages go away, you must intentionally delete them--which can lead to charges of censorship or favoritism.

How do y'all manage your message based-- routinely close threads (at what point?); move threads to an "archive" area; move threads to a hidden area; or just don't worry about managing anything?

--don

When needed I might go and modify it so threads cannot be replied to after a certain amount of time. That only appointed members can 'reawake' the thread.

When needed I might go and modify it so threads cannot be replied to...

How do you decide "when needed" is--do you have a policy that all of your staff know? Is it "when I feel like it"?

Closing a thread to replies does not make it unreadable or keep it out of search results--or is that not very important?

--don

i leave most of the threads open.... although some really old irrelevant threads get moved to my archive of unsearchable and unviewable threads :)

i just keep them all open and havent really moved them to an archive yet alot of times there are posts that cross reference other posts on my site and those old posts are necessary instead of retyping the information that is in that thread

there are posts that cross reference other posts on my site

Are these post instructional or something else?

--don

my archive of unsearchable and unviewable threads

Which, from the visitor's point of view, removes them from the forum.

--don

vBulletin's search engine could use some improvements, but all threads should remain searchable. I have often linked to threads up to 3 years old, because of duplicate info :).

All threads are kept open, I think at the moment, out of 2,500 thread, 3 are closed because of flaming. Members get tired of old threads and make new ones...it the natural system for a forum.

Most of the time, I just let threads die out.. eventually people stop posting in them, or they get moved to the second page . But once and a while a user may thread-dig and reply to them . In that case I close the thread , but generally speaking, I don't routinely close threads :)

Are these post instructional or something else?

--don
instructional and technical information that is still valid and some are just the users of the forum having a good time

if a thread is not active i jsut delete it