Time to delete some topic boards?

[Queenbean]

I've just seen a topic which is called "only joking" and two of the last five threads are either racist or disablist threads.

And of those five threads, one of them goes back to 2004 so the board is barely ever used.

Isn't it time to do an audit of topics and delete some? There's all sorts of random stuff out there - do we really need it kept forever and ever?

Is it time also to consider an expiration date for all boards, not just chat? Maybe one year for all topics apart from Classics?

Hi there
Thanks for drawing our attention to these. We're going to take a look and get back to you soon.

Update: We're having a sort through of topics at the mo and will have a cull of the dead ones in the near future. Please do let us know if you spot any you think have run their course and we'll take a look.

Hi Becky

Thanks for the update.

I presume you've checked google analytics / similar for user stats on the most under-used boards?

There are posts which might still be useful resources even if the topics aren't in use - to give one example. the thread on the very little used CANparent parenting course board. Someone who's going on one of those, or researching parenting classes for study, might find that worth looking at. Some stuff is worth archiving so it can be read, but could be moved out of the main set of active boards.

AIBU needs to either go or be changed to ' is it unreasonable'

gets rid of th e personal aspect of it

Equally, though, penny, there are many threads which might contain information that could be actively misleading or out of date. This board, for example, still has posts on it going back to May 2003, if I'm not mistaken. What point could there be - other than for a social historian, who could presumably still arrange to access them - of having posts knocking around from - say - 10 years ago?

I guess it's a cultural difference in the end: some sites and people have cultures of preserving stuff, others less so. I think there should be more opportunity for people to delete their own posts, and more traffic on 30 days here however. But if people wrote stuff expecting it to stick around, it probably should, unless highly offensive, libellous etc.

And again a matter of opinion whether users are trusted to make sense of what may be outdated info or not, or have it done for them. There has been so much posted on here that it's often not necessary to make a new thread, because there's advice there in old ones. Some topics I wouldn't bother reading anything from before about 2010 though. (Talking of which, if search could be ordered by post date, that would be great)

Social historian? Earlier this week I enjoyed reading a few old threads seeing how opinions of a famous person had changed over time according to what had been in the news about them. If you want to argue that people should have better things to do than read that, I won't challenge it though!

The Swine Flu and Ebola boards could probably also be culled.

I agree that putting some boards into cryptic storage (can't be posted on and are all set as sub-folders of The Graveyard) would tidy up the files a lot.

I do think you should have to actively tick a box to unlock a zombie thread, and also not be a brand new member who is almost certainly a spammer.

I don't think there are ANY theads across any of the boards which are so useful that the info can't be googled

Maybe apart from the sticky on top of the relationships board

Yes but MNHQ would rather that people looking for information about how to clean Venetian Blinds or whatever got it from MN, even on a super-old thread rather than HouseCleaningTips.net.

Yes but my point is that they could just blanket delete certain topics entirely rather than trawlig through them to find the one or two useful threads that there are in that topic

@Queenbean

I don't think there are ANY theads across any of the boards which are so useful that the info can't be googled

Maybe apart from the sticky on top of the relationships board

Many people use MN instead of Google, though.
Just saying
NB please see YABeckyMN's post - we are going to be sorting the topics, we promise.
Happy Friday all

Please see my post at 20.23 Olivia, I'm just suggesting saving you having to go through millions of threads for the potential few which are useful and worth saving!

I remember when Only Joking was almost as popular as AIBU is now.
There also used to be a topic for new members to introduce themselves that was really popular, but the site is too big for that now.
Do agree that there are some really random topics though!

The Support, Theory, Activism and Book Club forums in FWR don't get much traffic as everything goes in FWR Chat. This results in new posters starting threads in specific forums and getting few, and in some cases, no replies as posts aren't seen.

Yes, there was a massive fallout on FWR a few years ago that resulted in MN opening several new topics (I can't remember the logic now but it made sense at the time). Now that's all ancient history we could surely revert to fewer feminist topics.

The Cellar.

I remember ferreting around at work and finding out that some admin staff were keeping computer files - don't ask about the methods - that they could no longer access because they no longer had the relevant operational computer systems! It blew my mind.

ParentPort.

I think most of the posts there are nothing to do with ParentPort but are general parenting threads, and that has nee the case since the topic opened.

There is a newbies corner section Miili.
I somehow ended up on a board called insight pictures when I first joined... what even is an insight picture?