I suggest that in order to save on space and costs of operating this site that you consider purging older threads from the database. Of what use is it to have anything over 30 days stored?

Spoken like a true philistine.

The problems is we dont have enough nazi moderators to delete pointless threads.

Most people come across the site when they search for something in google. If there was only 30 days worth of threads stored, there'd be a lot less visitors and new members.

A lot of the threads are full of interesting information and it'd be a shame, for the authors and for everyone else if that information was deleted.

Stupidest idea ever.

Phonetic, your comments are insightful and offer knowledge I had no previously considered. I am uncertain what the best course of action might be now... perhaps anything older than 1 year should be discarded?

perhaps anything older than 1 year should be discarded?

Perhaps nothing should be discarded for the reasons listed above and more.
This is a wonderful reference place (except for the crap threads) and a piece of history for a lot of the users here.
People like to go back and read stuff they wrote and others wrote.

Drive space is very cheap.

How much do you really think will be saved by deleting the historical threads?

We'd be deleting archives of already debated material that people could link to when inevitably debating the same things over and over.

There is very little to no benefit, and a lot of downside.
It's just not a good idea.

I agree with others here with at least a brain cell, deleting old threads is a truly moronic idea!

Not only would you be deleting a lot of historic and old threads and much of the best material this site has to offer, but also a lot of new visitors, who come here by search engines.

I suggest darksidZz hides in a deep hole where no-one can hear him speak such nonsense.

Using extremely crude and inaccurate measuring tools i predict that sciforum uses around 600 MB, well within the size range of a "cheap" web hotel in my country.

how ever what properly cost the most is bandwidth so i suggest that if you truly want to save sci a few dimes you stop wasting bandwidth with pointless and foolish threads

Is there a way to find the first ever thread?

So that's universal condemnation then? Thank God for that. Maybe you all do have a sense of the sacred after all.
This is a wonderful reference place (except for the crap threads) and a piece of history for a lot of the users here.
Us bottom-dwellers like the crap more than anything else.

I think the first thread had something about UFO's, or may be not.
We once had found it, only to forget it again. Meh.

This is the first and probably last time I'll vote in one of derenzi's polls.

Voting to purge: darksidzz (or whatever he's called); perplexity; Sauna.

Seriously weird.

Could this be the first post?

http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=1

Could this be the first post?

http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=1

No there are older ones:

http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=157

Don't think so, check the date.
Btw, I found it, the very, very first! http://web.archive.org/web/19991007105311/www.exosci.com/discuss/messages/32.html

I feel like Indiana discovering the Ark :cool:

No there are older ones:

http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=157

Then PhP is like a logical republican.

I use achieved threads in the old Exosci forums to boost my post count. A few people know this.

But anyway... why purge old threads? There's a gold mine of information in the database. If we purged old threads, what would encourage people to join this site? There would be nothing indexed in Google, for example. Plus, we would just encourage discussions of the same topics over and over again. That happens now, but not as much as it could happen.

Is David Watanabe, a GOD?

The early post numbers don't correspond to their posting dates because they came from the news clipper that used to be the front page of Exosci. These articles were converted to posts when the clipper was dropped and that information was archived. The newer articles may have been converted first.

And, yes, Dave Watanabe is enshrined in the pantheon of our hearts. He makes some pretty good software these days. We are, however, part of the Church of Plazma now.

darkie:

I suggest that in order to save on space and costs of operating this site that you consider purging older threads from the database.


In order to save space, why don't we ban members who make inane threads and polls?

Most 'Old' threads don't abuse the bandwidth, since no one views them. The only things that do are Spiders that are spidering for search engines who take a copy of it and only check the headers to see if the file has been altered or removed before making any updates to their engine.

The true killer thread are those that are less than one month old because these threads are for the most part being posted to and constantly altering, the spiders then visit the active threads more often and they consume an awful lot of bandwidth in the process.

Sciforums has at least 5 Identifiable Spiders, some for search engines others for 'Research' Companies (coughEcheloncough) and then there are ones that are made to be indistinguishable from normal posters.

Deleting threads doesn't actually conserve any bandwidth (although it would save space), the reason for this is Spiders and bots in general are a stubborn breed, it can take many years for a page to come off their list of URL's to spider, especially if people keep doing searches that pull their cache on search engines. So the spiders cause Redirects and 404 errors instead of pulling the right page (They keep coming back because a network error could cause a 404 and a search engine has to deal with these 'brown outs'.)

Purge everything midnightly, GMT.