IMPORTANT --- POLICY RE: DELETING OLD TOPICS/POSTS

[Kathryn]

I prefer to use the search function when I have a question about something that has probably been asked before. That way we can add to previous topics without having to have the same discussion repeatedly. This would be good for questions such as germinating a specific species or determining which palms do best indoors. Unfortunately, most people do not title their posts appropriately to allow for proper search and I end up asking a new question anyway. Therefore, deleting after six months sounds good to me.

[Darold Petty]

Dean, my choice is that you go forward with the automatic delete based on elapsed time since last posting.  Perhaps 6 months on the main thread and 1 month on the palapa.

many thanks for your efforts!

[Charles Wychgel]

(Darold Petty @ May 01 2007,22:36)

QUOTE

Dean, my choice is that you go forward with the automatic delete based on elapsed time since last posting.  Perhaps 6 months on the main thread and 1 month on the palapa.

many thanks for your efforts!

Senhor Modulator, Doctor Dypsis, Uncle Deano...whatever

I can only second Darold on this...

You are doing a great job

Obrigado,

hardstikke bedankt,

merci,

thanx,

houwwe zo    

[Carlo Morici]

I agree with the hard decision. Writing in palmtalk is palmtalking, just talking. If we want your words to be permanent we need to publish them (palm-publishing!) in a journal or a website. The leading authors of the best threads should consider writing papers (for the journal PALMS) for the posterity.

Six month sound a bit too less anyway. Maybe one year is a better choice (think of the photo-contest).

Carlo

[SunnyFl]

I say go for it!  Deleting 6-month-old topics in Discussing Palm Trees Worldwide, and maybe one month for Palappa (as suggested in a previous post) and Seeds/Plants for Sale and maybe a couple of others.  I do think the freeze data should be preserved - that's an incredible data bank of "real-life" observations - a California version of the CRDB.

I gotta admit, my first thought was ohhh noooo - since I had just done a search of over-6-month-old info.  But.......

The past few days, another very busy graphic-intensive  board that I like (Storm2K) has been going down repeatedly.  We kept getting 404s over half the time we tried to get on.  How frustrating!!!  No one wants that to happen to the Palm board!  

And I remember when the old palm board crashed - can't imagine what RLR went through, trying to salvage the posts.  So delete away, Dypsis Dean.

And thank you for running this board so very well, many many thanks.

[Phil]

Dean,

I think not all posts are equal.  Some are absolutely a great source of information for people at any stage of their palm education.  Others would never be missed.  All posts in the "Plants for Sale" section should be deleted after a few months for sure.  But, in the general post area some are true classics and nowhere else can this information be obtained.  Now, I know this means hand pruning, but perhaps that's what's ideally needed...or a little bigger hard drive.

Phil

[PALM MOD]

Phil,

Not only hand pruning, but also scrolling through each one to see if all the pics are still there. And because the order is always changing (it is constantly changing due to new postings), each "review session" would have to be a complete review all over again of thousands, and soon to be tens of thousands. And then I would still have to make decisions that would not please everyone. That is just not a practical solution IMO.

My suggestion takes all of this into account. The members would do the "pruning" by picking those that stay (by bumping), instead of trying to find those that should be deleted. And all of their collective eyes can be skimming and discovering when a thread has become dysfunctional due to dropped pics. If a thread becomes dysfunctional and nobody posts, then it's automatically deleted. If it's a good thread, anyone can "save" it. It might even be fun to have these old threads brought to the front every six months or so anyway for the newer members.

And again Phil, it's not the size of the hard drive that's the issue. It's the limitations of the software.

[BS Man about Palms]

When will all this start to happen Dean?

[PALM MOD]

Bill,

I'm not sure. It will depend on a few other things that may be waiting in the wings having to do with the forum. I'm just trying to get the best game plan I can.

Be assured that there will be plenty of notice, and I will be doing everything practical in order to make sure worthwhile info is not lost.

[ruskinPalms]

Hi Dean, I think you are doing a great job. Delete old, inactive posts as planned, but I would like to see a 1 year time frame rather than 6 months. Everyone is right on about the search function, it does not work all that well anyway and would probably work better with less data to search through.

I doubt storage space is too much an issue. Hard drives are big these days and space on servers is relatively cheap. Most of the forum is text and dynamically generated HTML which does not take a lot of space and I would say that most people that like to post a lot of pics here prefer to use a different hosting site as the quality is better that you can post and the overall performance of the this forum is improved. When picture hosting sites are used, the bulk of the data in a thread is served from a much faster server optimized for serving picture data. From what I understand, it is not served to the IPS Forum server first and then served to the end user by the IPS forum server. Pictures are served directly to the end user leaving the IPS server to only serve text data which is simple by comparison. By the way Dean, where is this IPS forum website served from? I think some people have the idea that you are serving this website from a back room in your house from your home PC and all you have to do is hook up another hard drive to you USB port. I have a feeling it is being served from some paid for space at a server farm from who knows where. What is this software designed to be able to handle as far as number of topics and replies? Even if the software is theoretically "unlimited" we still have to remember that computer resources are not unlimited. Very large data bases take a lot of computer resources, even by modern computer standards,  and deleting the older threads will help keep this forum alive. Also, the IPS forum website may be 1 of a 100 different websites that the paid for server is handling concurrently.

I like the idea that someone mentioned that deleting old threads may actually increase the amount of interaction of new and old members. New People are able to simply lurk around and search for older information and not really interact. Now they will have to ask and interact! I doubt most of the palm gurus on here mind answering the same question multiple times. Each time they answer the same question, they may refine and rethink their answers thereby progressing their own knowledge while assisting others. Deleting old posts keeps this from becoming a static forum.

More about the image hosting sites, well that is just going to take some discipline on the part of the members of this forum. If you post a pic with an image hosting site, DO NOT MOVE IT!!! As far as the hosting sites going out of business, that is out of our control really. However, Photobucket seems to be sticking around and really offers generous storage space and good performance for free. Remember, once you link a picture from your hosting site to the forum, Do not move it to a different directory on the hosting site! Plan out how you want to organize your pictures prior to posting them to the forum so you will not get the urge to reorganize in the future.

Sorry for the long post. To make a long post short: Dean I think it is a great idea to delete the old, inactive posts that have not been "reactivated" within a certain timeframe, but again, I would like to see a 1 year limit if possible.

[PALM MOD]

I know most of you don't care about the technical aspects of what a forum such as this entails, but perhaps a few of you do. I knew little about web management and the way servers work (or what a server really did) before I signed on as moderator, but I did know a fair amount about computers as such. So I figured I could learn fast, and thought it would be a good way to learn.

This forum is hosted by a web hosting company that the IPS pays for monthly. We presently use about half of the resources of the plan they are paying for. So bandwidth and storage are not really an issue yet. We run what is known as a dedicated server (as opposed to shared) running Linux. IMO, our forum software is our weak point. It is a freeware solution. So while  it costs nothing, the support is weak, updates are few and far between, and the security is not the best. It is also written in cgi, which is an older, slower, and by today's standards, a  limited language.

I have been actively experimenting with a new forum software that is much more advanced, and would be a substantial improvement if I can get it to work. There are some problems getting all the data to transfer, so that is one of the reasons I was raising the questions of saving/deleting old data.

I haven't raised the topic yet because I didn't want to discuss something that had little chance of succeeding. However, we are getting closer and if there is anyway to utilize this new software, I will push for it as there are many advantages from a moderator point of view. It is written in php with a MySQL data base, which makes it faster and "tighter" and would let the forum accumulate much more data before "choking." There are other advantages that over time I think the members would appreciate as well. Just a sample would be multiple photo uploads of larger sizes, spell checker, etc. However, the transition would not be painless, and there are always many that hate anything new when they are comfortable with what they have. But that is how to get left behind quickly when it comes to the world of computers.

So on the horizon there are some potential changes/improvements for the forum, and that is why I have begun to ask for feedback about things. And it is likely I will be asking for more soon.

[www.dadluvsu.com]

Mmmmm.... spell check.  

[tropicalb]

Dean...

Whether everyone likes it or not, the "bump to save" option is the best way to deal with the limitations of this software...while it has it's drawbacks, it does make forum members themselves responsible for what gets saved and what does not.

The only other option I can see that would work, would be this:

If space is not an issue, from time to time (say perhaps once or twice a year), you could transfer all the forum files from the server to another server, or if space allows, a different folder on the current palmtalk server, and give that archived forum another URL, and post that URL in the current forum as palmtalk archive 07 or whatever...then you set that archived forum up to be read-only, and nothing would be lost.

[PALM MOD]

Burt and everyone else,

I am really appreciating all the feedback because no one can think of everything. So, if it sounds like I may be dismissing any suggestions, I am not. They stimulate me to thing along different lines.

Re: Burt's suggestion. That sounds like a possibility until I think about how to do it. I would think I could only do that if I transfered all of the data at once. I don't think I could take only this portion of this sub-forum and that of another. So I would have to transfer everything at once intact (data base and all), and we would be starting brand new each time we did that. In time we would have several saved forums with different addresses. So would you check www.Palmtalk1 , then www.Pamtalk2 , etc. for new posts, or would we close it to new posts leaving a lot of the new threads hanging. Sounds a little cumbersome and impratical to me.

[tropicalb]

Dean...

You wouldn't be "starting new"....you would basically just archive the forum at any given point (now for instance)...make a copy of the all the forum files to another folder, make it read only, set your link to the "archived forum"....and that would be it.

if you were to do it today for instance, you could then delete ANYTHING you wanted to on the "active" forum, and if someone wanted to look up an old thread, they could just go to the "read only" archived forum.

Yes...there would be threads on the "archive" that had just started (and you could delete anything on the archived forum that was, say, less than two weeks old or so if you wanted to), but I was just offering a method to save all the threads that are on the forum now for posterity...

You could do it every few years or so...or just this one time.

It would be easy to do, and would solve the dilemma you now face regarding choosing which posts to keep and which to delete...everybody wins. All the data is there for posterity, and you can delete anything you choose to from the "active" forum, knowing that all previous forum data is there for members to view if they choose to do so.

[PALM MOD]

Burt,

I think I see what you are getting at.

But don't forget that the "forum files" you mentioned are useless unless tied to and linked to the database, cgi, and forum software in exactly (stress exactly) the same manner (and possibly same software versions even) they were when created. Otherwise no ordered topics, categories, or search. So we would have another URL with an exact clone of the forum when copied, right?

Since this forum is not yet a year old, and it started brand new, I would imagine an archived clone would be needed at least once a year. We already have one archive, so in 5 years from now we would have 6 different archived forums with 6 different URLs? And some of the sub forums, like the freeze info for example, and probably a lot of threads, would exist as duplicates on multiple archives, and possibly the active one as well, unless they were manually managed. Am I missing something?

I would like whatever procedure is adopted, to be workable without major changes for the next 2, 5, 10 years, and easily managable by whoever is moderator.

[bgl]

I'm clueless when it comes to most of the practical aspects, but I can't help but wonder: how many Forum members actually visit the old Forum to look for something? If 5-6 years down the road we have half a dozen archived forums, who's going to take the time to go back and search each and every one of those for something that it's so much easier to just start a new thread for? As I said before, I'm sure we all feel that we don't want to lose data, but I believe there comes a time when compromises have to be made. Is it worth the trouble? How many Forum members will actually check older versions?

[Zac in NC]

If you want a spell checker, just use Firefox to browse the net. I comes complete with one. I don't want to lose data either, but I kinda like the point that was made, that it would encourage new people to interact with the regular and more experienced posters( there's not a good way to say this, like old guys, because not all of us are old, per se, maybe the old timers) This has made me think about what threads I would save and which ones I would dump. Its not an easy decision.

Zac

[PALM MOD]

Bo,

I'm with you. We just can't save everything forever. (Well technically we could, but.......)

I think Burt put it right:

"Whether everyone likes it or not, the "bump to save" option is the best way to deal with the limitations of this software...while it has it's drawbacks, it does make forum members themselves responsible for what gets saved and what does not."

It would not be easy finding moderators that are expected to manually sift through and manage a large volume of individual data entries. The closer the forum can be to self regulating, the more chance it has of continued ongoing success.

[tropicalb]

Dean...

So we would have another URL with an exact clone of the forum when copied, right?

Yes...that is how it would work.

I would imagine an archived clone would be needed at least once a year. We already have one archive, so in 5 years from now we would have 6 different archived forums with 6 different URLs?

Yes...that could be done. All it requires is hard disk space.

If 5-6 years down the road we have half a dozen archived forums, who's going to take the time to go back and search each and every one of those for something that it's so much easier to just start a new thread for? As I said before, I'm sure we all feel that we don't want to lose data, but I believe there comes a time when compromises have to be made. Is it worth the trouble? How many Forum members will actually check older versions?

I guess the real issue is whether or not all the data, photos and comments that have been posted on the forum over the last year are "valuable" or not....a question that only the forum members can answer. It's not a whole lot of trouble to copy files and make a link to them.

Bo...when i joined the Cycad Society forum, the first thing i did was to go back and read posts from six or seven years ago...gave me a real insight into the group, as well as provided me with many valuable contacts I would otherwise never have been able to make.

And some of the sub forums, like the freeze info for example, and probably a lot of threads, would exist as duplicates on multiple archives, and possibly the active one as well, unless they were manually managed. Am I missing something?

After the archive was made, you could delete (for example) all posts older than 3 months from the "active" forum. This would make searches on the active forum easier and faster, while at the same time the archive preserves all the old threads and photos that have been posted. With an archive, no one could complain that "important" threads were deleted and lost forever.

The only reason I made the suggestion was to let you all know that the option existed, and would require nothing more than to mirror the existing forum on a server.

Also....just so everyone knows...I am THE packrat from hell.  

[paulgila]

it appears you are in good company.

[Zac in NC]

I'm pretty bad about being a pack rat myself and so is my mother. I have trouble throwing things out.

Zac

[tropicalb]

(IPSPTModerator @ May 07 2007,00:34)

QUOTE

Bo,

I'm with you. We just can't save everything forever. (Well technically we could, but.......)

I think Burt put it right:

"Whether everyone likes it or not, the "bump to save" option is the best way to deal with the limitations of this software...while it has it's drawbacks, it does make forum members themselves responsible for what gets saved and what does not."

It would not be easy finding moderators that are expected to manually sift through and manage a large volume of individual data entries. The closer the forum can be to self regulating, the more chance it has of continued ongoing success.

Just read your post Dean...and I think your last thought says it best...

"The closer the forum can be to self regulating, the more chance it has of continued ongoing success."

I totally agree with that statement.

And really, the only problem I see with the "bump to save" method, is the fact that it will effectively negate one of the best forum shortcuts in that it will relegate old posts to "new" status by virtue of someone typing the word "bump" or "save" into an old post. If this were done numerous times, it would create that many more posts one would have to wade through to read the "real" new posts.

The main reason I'm so big on the archive is the fact that MANY people on this forum have put a LOT of time and effort into their posts (especially posts that have LOTS of photos...it takes a LONG time to create these mini-travelogues), and I would hate to see them lost.

Speaking for myself, I could definitely see myself going to this forum in 10 years and clicking on an archive link to show people pictures (to use one example) of Bo's garden the way it looked in 2007.

[bgl]

Burt,

I have probably posted more photos than most over the last year, and I really don't have a problem with older photos being deleted. As it happens, we also have our own website where these photos (and many more) are posted, so maybe that's why I'm not too concerned. I really don't know, but I'd like to think that I would feel the same way even if we did NOT have our own site.

As far as going back 6-7 years - wow!! I don't know anything about the Cycad Society Forum. Is it as active as this one? When I signed up for the IPS Forum in March 2006 I went back about two months and checked all the older threads that seemed to be of interest (and I revived a few of them). And that was fairly time-consuming. Going back several years would be a full time job for quite some time considering the enormous amount of new posts every single day. I have a hard time seeing people do this. Even if we were to keep posts for 6 months (and 12 might be more to everyone's liking), that would require quite a bit of time to wade thru all those posts!

Bo-Göran

[Neofolis]

Although I use the search feature occasionally, it tends to be to look for something quite obscure that doesn't get mentioned very often and often has few replies, so would probably be unimportant to most members.

That said, a simplistic way to decide what some members considered important is by the number of replies.  That idea may apply less in The Palapa, but if you could keep important threads based on number of replies, it may help.  I don't know what filering options you have, if any, so it is difficult to make useful suggestions.