Next week I am going to start getting rid of old and dead topics on the board. As things stand right now we have a ludicrous number of old postings on the forum (the nightly backup is several GB in size), and I think this plays strongly into some of the site's performance issues. Some areas will remain untouched, some will get a long window, and some will get a shorter window. Here's how it's going to break down:
The Important and Frequently Asked Questions areas will be left untouched.
Any of the book discussion areas (Dresden Files, Codex Alera, and Other Works areas) will have a one-year window on them. Topics which have not been posted in for over a year will be deleted.
The General Chat discussion areas will have a three-month window on them. Topics which have not been posted in for over 90 days will be deleted.
We're giving folks the rest of this week to archive whatever is going to be deleted that's important to them. Also, if there's a thread in one of the book discussion areas that folks find particularly important please use the "report to moderator" feature to nominate the thread (or specific post) to get moved into our Frequently Asked Questions area. We could use some help identifying that material. We'll already be reviewing Jim's posts for the juicy stuff, though, so please do this only for stuff which *isn't* directly from Jim.
Hopefully on the other side of this we'll have a leaner board that performs better. But regardless, we'll be transitioned to a new mode of operation that will make the forum more possible to sustain for years to come.
