Does anyone ever read really old topics in the Headlines forum?

[charlesr]

There are 7000+ topics dated back to 2003.
Would there be an acceptable purge year cutoff?

Similarly there are 7000+ headlines topics. What about those?

Actually there are topics back to 1970. wtf. They can't be read though
Will get rid of those.....

[Valiant]

Keep them all I do this and read other stuff this place is good for research work and ideas plus insights and future trending and other areas plus my Profile has been derezzed enough with all the switchovers I cannot view all my content from my profile page.

However if it is casuing issues I would say go back four years and keep all of that so 2007.

Before you do this tell me I might want to archive some stuff.

[Golgo]

I don't like the idea of a purge, although I can appreciate how they might clutter the hell out of the place from the organizational/server end.

That said, I don't read them and I don't imagine many people would. Apart from: 1. the hypothetical researcher/historian of the 2000s import gaming scene; 2. the journo. on a retro publication looking to get a sense of what people thought about this-or-that 'back in the day'.

For both of those, though, I think the old threads might prove invaluable. Lots of well-informed people and good critics and devs commentating on there over the years...

[toythatkills]

Could you move any thread that hasn't been posted in since, say, 2008 onto a duplicate forum, and just have it be read only? Chuck a "forum archive" link up somewhere.

Aside from First Play, obviously, that all has to stay here.

[mmmonkey]

I wonder how many people search retro and tech threads? I do now and again when I either get a new console and want to find out about it and games.

[Malc]

Couldn't we maybe just have less threads?

I mean, this forum is well organised, and I know this doesn't necessarily relate to 10+ year old threads, but couldn't we keep more information in a single thread. If we kept 1 thread for a game, rather than having a headlines and first play, that cuts out on the doubling up on threads/more work for the search function to do.

[hush]

forum archive that sounds like an good idea
i do go back and read old stuff some times

[cutmymilk]

Isnt the point of a forum to be able to look at old threads? I sometimes go back years, yeah.

[prinnysquad]

I go back all the time. It's a valuable online resource. Plus, there's vital information on beers, films, chromehounds and pet deaths recorded here that doesn't exist anywhere else. If you offed those threads, you'd be killing my past.

[egparadigm]

Could you move any thread that hasn't been posted in since, say, 2008 onto a duplicate forum, and just have it be read only? Chuck a "forum archive" link up somewhere.

Aside from First Play, obviously, that all has to stay here.

Some kind of archive would be the best option, IMO.

[koopatroopa90]

Isn't there already an archive? A few years ago before I was a member but was looking for a Panny Q I remember coming across several threads here in an archive style site.

[charlesr]

The "archive" is just a bizarre html version of the site for search engines or something. See bottom right.

Sounds like it's not worth getting rid of anything from general gaming and I have no intention of getting rid of anything in First Play (2,500 games discussed!).

How about Headlines? Does anyone care about old news? Headlines is the most popular forum by the way. I've never searched in News, but that's not to say other people don't.

Thanks for taking the time to comment.

As for merging Headlines and First Play, I don't think that would go down too well - there's already too much non-first-play chat in the First play threads for my liking (which I regularly delete without warning, e.g. "sounds good, I'll get from xyz").

The reason I bring this up is that the reason the site falls over is due to search normally - with 1.5m posts, it's a bit taxing with the default vbulletin search. I might look at sphinx search - if anyone has the technical know-how to advise me on this, please contact me - I'd love to chat.

[koopatroopa90]

The "archive" is just a bizarre html version of the site for search engines or something. See bottom right.

Thats the old chestnut.

[kryss]

Create archives by year in chm/whatever format and have download links. Then the details are preserved and the forum is sped up.

[toythatkills]

That'd make it impossible to search for a specific thing, wouldn't it?