Pruning, and what you guys think.

[Jazzy]

I'll state the problem plainly: I can't carry on deleting threads in order to keep the database a sensible size. It's time-consuming, and there's also the added problem that by now, most of the largest threads have been deleted so I'm having to delete more smaller ones just to keep the forum at a constant size. There's also the problem that at some point, if I stop doing this for whatever reason, we're going to hit the size limit and be penalised.

So, I'm going to have to prune something, and this is where you come in, because I'm not going to unilaterally decide what, or how far back.

Here's a list of all the forums plus post numbers at time of writing, excluding usergroup-specific ones which are very small. Double asterisked ones are forums which I will not prune. The higher the number of posts, the more effective a prune is likely to be in reducing database size.

**New Colours - 6685
Petpets - 5461
New Features - 15716
Aesthetics - 3070
AaToW - 193
Misc - 13116
-
Site Suggestions - 2871
-
Chit-chat - 22077
Art - 5376
Subeta - c12000
**Subeta Colours - 4007
Offsite Games - 3102
Epilogue - 441

[adi_gallia]

I'm not sure what the general opinion is, but I was wondering if many people use the Petpet forum. I think most of the topics recently are just about new petpets which could be posted about in New Features if we wanted to discuss them. There are probably recent petpets that haven't even been discussed due to someone forgetting to make a topic. I don't know how useful old posts about petpets that were new are, but I doubt that many people will read them or refer to them.

People asking for petpet suggestions has become increasingly rare, I don't know if this is because we have these older posts to refer to or because we generally decide for ourselves now, or ask people via instant messenger or something. If anyone should want to ask for a petpet suggestion I think it could fit in Aesthetics, since that forum is generally used for pet suggestions.

But I don't know what other people's feelings are about Petpets, it's just the forum I find one of the more redundant that has quite a lot of posts.

I think Offsite Games and Miscellaneous could possibly be cut back. Offsite Games because if a topic hasn't been posted on in a while then it's unlikely that it will have a good reason to be bumped, there may be a newer version out or, if people want to talk about it again, they can make a new topic. I said Miscellaneous because it seems kind of full for a forum with topics from June last year on the first page, I'm not sure if it would have any important posts to refer back to though, which is maybe why it hasn't been pruned as of yet.

The posts in Subeta from when it used to be in Offsite Games could possibly be deleted since they seem out of date, but again I think some people might refer back to them. I saw one of the old posts being linked to only a few days ago on another forum.

EDIT: Oh...and what about New Features? Aren't old topics there, well, not new. But I suppose someone might want to link back to them, but I'm not sure why.

[Seerow]

I agree with Adi everything suggested.
The only thing about pruning topics in the Petpet forum is that some people might want to look at it for petpets, but a lot of those posts are so old and there may be new pets that match better that the person would probably just want to make a new post.

I think Aesthetics should also be pruned, seeing as the majority of it is what pet should I get and the threads are rather obsolete once the owner decides.

[Huggles]

I also agree with Adi. I think the lack of activity in the petpets forum is simply because so many of us have quit playing Neopets. There were also loads of new people joining and requesting matches before customization.

[Jazzy]

You're going to have to be a bit more specific - pruning means "deleting all posts older than __". If you want Petpets pruned, how far back?

[Monkeyguy]

Is it even necessary? Like Adi said there haven't been any real requests lately and new petpets could have a thread in New Features. Deleting it all together would be helpful to the database right?

[Jazzy]

Not really - having a forum with few posts makes very little difference to the database compared with not having a forum. It's the individual posts themselves which are taking up so much room.

I would be willing to combine it with New Features and Aesthetics...but this isn't actually going to help very much at all. Petpets is a very small forum - it accounts for just 5% of the forum's posts. Pruning it alone is not going to solve the space problems. Look at Chit-Chat, New Features, Misc and Subeta in particular, please, which together account for about 65% of posts, rather than focusing on the unpopular forums.

That said, I would like to prune all pre-Customisation topics (end of April 2007) in both Aesthetics and Petpets no matter what happens to Petpets, because I suspect that things have changed enough since then that matches and coding are no longer correct. Opinions on that?

[adi_gallia]

I agree, that all Aesthetics and Petpets before customisation should be pruned.

As for Misc, New Features and Subeta I'd say anything older than a year and a half would be good to go. That would clear 12 pages of the Miscellaneous forum alone, which is quite a lot I would assume.

I think we should combine Petpets with the other forums anyway, but not keeping any of the New petpet posts that are older than 3/6 months.

I'm not really sure about Chit Chat, though, I don't know what people would agree on deleting, I remember that reminiscing thread that was made a while ago, so if these disappeared it might delete some good memories people have had, whereas I would think these other forums contain more...disposable (?) posts.

[Jazzy]

Yeah, I personally probably wouldn't indiscriminately prune Chit-Chat, because I can't tell if the older stuff should actually be got rid of.

So, suggestions are therefore then:
- Prune all of Petpets before April 2007
- Prune all of Aesthetics before April 2007
- Prune all of Subeta before February 2007 (I know you said a year and a half, Adi, but there aren't any posts that old, so that's a year)
- Prune all of New Features before August 2006
- Prune all of Miscellaneous before August 2006
- Remove Petpets, splitting the remaining matches into Aesthetics and remaining new petpets into New Features.

Opinions on all of those?

[Wingsrising]

That seems reasonable to me: a year and a half sounds like a good cut-off, and I also see no reason for a forum just for Petpets. (IIRC, we had petpets for doing matching before starting the Aesthetics forum, though I could be misremembering.)

Though I realize it's not a big space-user, I also tend to think that Offsite Games could be prumed at a year-and-a-half: at least, I wouldn't think that stuff older than that is unlikely to be useful.

Chit-chat: hard to say. Honestly I think that a lot of stuff on that forum is actually pretty disposable (year-old posts complaining about a broken Internet connection, for example) but I can see how there's some stuff that would be really nice to keep, as well. (I went browsing and found some neat old threads -- look, there's the thread where I got my cats! -- look, there's the thread where we got into a fight about X -- etc.) I'm not sure what to say about that one, since going through it manually would obviously be hugely time-consuming.

Is this pruning going to be happening automatically from now on (ie, all posts on those forums more than a year-and-a-half old automatically drop off), or is it something that's going to be started manually whenever we start running low on space? (I don't know that it actually matters, I'm just curious.)

Whenabouts are you thinking of doing the pruning? If we're not on the verge of running out of space, could we have a week-ish warning to go through and see if there are any older posts we want to save?

[Jazzy]

I'd like to prune Petpets straight away, to give us some leeway, but I'm happy to give all the other forums a week once I know people are fine with this, and to put a notice to that effect in the header.

I can either set it up so it always prunes if a topic gets to a year and a half old, or I can prune now as a one-off event. Either works for me.

[daisybell]

I decided to go and look at Misc. to see how much we would be losing, and whether there would be any useful topics. The majority of the oldest topics were actually AaToW, because of course they were made before the AaToW forum was reinstated- and they're really not of a great deal of use to us now. There are a few topics which probably are worth keeping, but they wouldn't be easy to fish out from the junk that isn't.

The same is probably true of New Features, I guess, though there are fewer topics (because they generally have more replies) and many more interesting ones in there. I don't especially like the idea of pruning topics like this one but then there's only a point in keeping them if people have a use for them and would want to go back and read them. As you say, sifting through the topics for ones to delete takes a long time and is very ineffecient, so pruning is, I guess, a necessary evil we're going to have to put up with for want of a better solution.

I don't know what deleting the Petpets forum achieves, really... it doesn't free up a lot of space in terms of data storage because the forum itself is only like an empty shell for the topics and posts to live in.

[Jazzy]

Well, it means that when I unhide the new Newbies forum soonish, we won't have increased the overall number of forums on the index.

If there's a topic you really want kept, bump it and it won't be pruned; if it's locked, PM me and I'll unlock it or move it to a forum which won't prune, assuming it fits.

[Wingsrising]

I'd like to prune Petpets straight away, to give us some leeway, but I'm happy to give all the other forums a week once I know people are fine with this, and to put a notice to that effect in the header.

Works for me.

[adi_gallia]

I am happy with that list of suggestions, I didn't take note of what the dates were on the oldest Subeta posts.

I can either set it up so it always prunes if a topic gets to a year and a half old, or I can prune now as a one-off event. Either works for me.

If it were up to me I would rather prune it now as a one-off event, rather than automatically pruning old topics. Hopefully the amount of topics that are getting deleted will save up enough room so that we don't run into this problem for a while at least.