[Debate] Archive Board(s)

[myke]

Debate: Archive Boards

Archive boards are either an individual board, or a group of boards people use to move old inactive threads into. The most common reasoning for this is to keep their active boards within a forum neat and organized. This is also done to prevent old topics from being bumped up, as most archive boards are read only boards.

Pros:
As mentioned above, using archive boards on your ProBoard can keep your boards organized with only active threads. Also as mentioned above, this can help prevent the bumping of old, sometimes out of date topics. Many forums have a rule about bumping old threads, so an archive board is more efficient and tidy than locking or deleting old threads (especially the latter if the admin is concerned about overall forum postcount).

Cons:
There is no universal rule that says the bumping of old topics are a bad thing. It really depends on the nature of the topic as well as the nature of the post that bumps it back up. For example, if you run a ProBoard themed after Spongebob Squarepants, a member may have created a poll on which season was their favorite. After activity in that thread dies, it may be 6 months before someone else finds it and decides to start up the conversation again, which helps the activity on your forum.

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There's pros and cons to just about everything in life, light to dark, good to evil, Star Trek to Star Wars, Ying to Yang, so what is your opinion on the use of archive boards?

Debate away!

Credit to Sissorelle for the initial idea of this topic.

[Ímþ®óvîšâ†ó®]

myke said:

Debate: Archive Boards

Archive boards are either an individual board, or a group of boards people use to move old inactive threads into. The most common reasoning for this is to keep their active boards within a forum neat and organized. This is also done to prevent old topics from being bumped up, as most archive boards are read only boards.

Pros:
As mentioned above, using archive boards on your ProBoard can keep your boards organized with only active threads. Also as mentioned above, this can help prevent the bumping of old, sometimes out of date topics. Many forums have a rule about bumping old threads, so an archive board is more efficient and tidy than locking or deleting old threads (especially the latter if the admin is concerned about overall forum postcount).

Cons:
There is no universal rule that says the bumping of old topics are a bad thing. It really depends on the nature of the topic as well as the nature of the post that bumps it back up. For example, if you run a ProBoard themed after Spongebob Squarepants, a member may have created a poll on which season was their favorite. After activity in that thread dies, it may be 6 months before someone else finds it and decides to start up the conversation again, which helps the activity on your forum.

---

There's pros and cons to just about everything in life, light to dark, good to evil, Star Trek to Star Wars, Ying to Yang, so what is your opinion on the use of archive boards?

Debate away!

Credit to Sissorelle for the initial idea of this topic.

Here's how I've analyzed how good/bad archive boards are...

Positives

Negatives

Excellent to store old threads in case one has to refer back to something old Like the FBI, the archive board can serve as a record file for members who have been trouble-makers or have posted something that wasn't in accordance with the rules. The archive board could also be used as a 'trash board'

If there's billions of threads in the archived area, the last few may get deleted and yet would be harder to find (even by thread search) As new members sign up, their usernames would be harder to find (espacially if there's lots of threads that are within such a board) more specifically if their accounts have been deleted . Some could argue that having an archive board could prove to be a form of wasted clutter if the staff delete the old threads or simply leave them as they are in the boards which they're posted in.

With the negative points (excluding the last one that is), the only thing I could think of to override them, would be to make a contents page. Though in alot of circumstances it can be a waste of time, espacially since the character limit in the message box in posts is around 250,000 characters

I'd personally use archive boards myself, though at times, have had my doubts about whether to use them or not

~*Improvisator*~

[Fredtart]

As a girl who mainly uses PB for RPG, I'd have to say YES. I have an archive sub-board for every RP board, and it helps very much.

There are times when all threads must be closed. However, in the case of RPG threads, you do not want to lose them.

So I personally believe in archive boards. But I much prefer them as sub-boards underneath the board they were originally in, as otherwise it does indeed get cluttered.

[kelendria]

I have archive boards when I feel my forum is too busy & the old topics need to be moved (like post shoutouts, birthday shoutouts etc).
I don't have one at the moment, but when I have, I do allow members to post in them if they want to (I know some prefer them locked), however most of the time it does get ignored anyway so I'm not fussy over hiding them
I usually keep it as a sub board or in an old category if it fits to keep things tidy.

How about a staff board discussion

[Artemis]

I have an archive board. Incidentally it contains more posts than the next leading board. I've found it to be very useful when managing my board. Firstly, it makes threads in all the other boards easier to manage. Since all of them are being posted in, it's better to have them easier to manage, no? It also keeps down some of the threads that really shouldn't be posted in anymore. They've had their day, and they need to go, however they were special, so let's keep them.

I don't really have any negatives with my archive board apart from the size. However most members know that, if they need to find something, all they need to do is do a forum search within the archive. Now, with more than 25,000 posts in my archive, it may be a bit tedious, but from what I have heard, it hasn't been that hard for anyone to find anything really.

I almost never delete anything on my forum. Call me nitpicky if you will. However I believe that even the many smaller threads that get moved have their relevence, so I keep them in the archive in case I want to look back on them later. We've got some good memories in there that I'd rather not lose, and it's good to look back on what was going on in the beginning.

Now, sometimes the threads are looked upon for references, or proof of something. If people are doubtful of something, more often than not it can be found in the archive board. It's visited very often for this particular reason, which also comes in very handy.

I suppose with my style of administration, I don't like to get rid of things. Archives are what I like, since looking back on things and having information handy is nice, and useful for my needs.

[kaylee2000]

I dislike archive boards, I think they offset the forum with so many posts in one area, it also makes the other boards seem less active in my opinion. Plus there's no reason why anyone can't bump a topic if they have something worth while to say and contribute. Archive boards seem to to shuffle too much into one place and make things extremely difficult to find. I think it's best to leave the topics in their original place, that way members can find those topics easier, because that's the most obvious place they belong.

[Mara]

I think it mostly depends on what the archive boards are used for...

I mainly use mine boards for old locked threads that can no longer be posted in, but I leave them there in case new members want to read through old chat threads or old weekly poll threads.
(I lock threads after they reach around 50 pages because I had a problem a few years back with posts disappearing when threads got too long. Of course, PV4 probably has fixed this, but I've kept the "rule").

Also, in the same line, I have a section for old RP threads, so members/guests can read all the previous pieces of different RP stories.


But, I think it people use their archives as just a way to move over "old" unused threads all the time, I think it'll just clutter the archives instead of individual boards.


I do have a thread in the main archive area where members can post and ask an old thread to be unlocked and moved back to the board topic of discussion. Just because it's locked, doesnt' mean it's completely gone.
I only delete threads that are spam threads, so any locked thread is discarded into the archives.

[_\|..Do.mi.no..|/_]

For the non-RP boards, I see no point in an archive board. Most of the non-RP's that I've seen are mostly discussion boards whose posts can be re-opened at any time, if the admin allows. However, for an RP forum like mine, it just seems neater to have all of the threads that were over a certain amount of days old or finished. Besides, it just easier to find what you're RPing in without having to search through the old posts that the newer members bump up. But that's just me. It may seem to bring an imbalance around the forum to some, but not me, and all of my members agree with me that it's just easier, more organized, and makes the forum seem neater.

[Gamoc]

I don't think that you should use archives for old threads that are no longer inactive, if you move them away, it makes it look like that board is very inactive, and can drive guests from coming. Though I do suggest and recycling bin, which is an archive for threads you don't want your members to see. After I lock a thread, I make sure that I keep it there for a couple of days, then move it to the recycling bin that I have hidden out of view from all of the members.

For moving old threads, say there was a really great thread, you move it to the archive, someone wants to reply, and they find out that they cannot reply, thus making some members irritated. I think it is best to keep it there, like myke about that part.

[WunderBunny]

The previous two posts said most of what I wanted to say. I keep a 'recycle bin' board, which is visible only to staff.

We are not a RP board. We are a chat and information board. I prefer to keep the old threads where they are and lock them. Often I want to link to a useful thread. If I move a thread to the archive, the link is broken.

[Satai Delenn]

lray2 said:

I have an archive board. Incidentally it contains more posts than the next leading board. I've found it to be very useful when managing my board. Firstly, it makes threads in all the other boards easier to manage. Since all of them are being posted in, it's better to have them easier to manage, no? It also keeps down some of the threads that really shouldn't be posted in anymore. They've had their day, and they need to go, however they were special, so let's keep them.

I don't really have any negatives with my archive board apart from the size. However most members know that, if they need to find something, all they need to do is do a forum search within the archive. Now, with more than 25,000 posts in my archive, it may be a bit tedious, but from what I have heard, it hasn't been that hard for anyone to find anything really.

I almost never delete anything on my forum. Call me nitpicky if you will. However I believe that even the many smaller threads that get moved have their relevence, so I keep them in the archive in case I want to look back on them later. We've got some good memories in there that I'd rather not lose, and it's good to look back on what was going on in the beginning.

Now, sometimes the threads are looked upon for references, or proof of something. If people are doubtful of something, more often than not it can be found in the archive board. It's visited very often for this particular reason, which also comes in very handy.

I suppose with my style of administration, I don't like to get rid of things. Archives are what I like, since looking back on things and having information handy is nice, and useful for my needs.

I thoroughly agree with the above. I have two websites that I run (one is a co-adminship) and the larger website has an archive section. I have found it actually to be very useful and it allows older established members to find a thread they remember from "way back when" if it is relevent to a new discusion (to help them prove a point or what have you) and it allows new members to see what was previously discussed over long periods of time.

The archive section we have still allows members to post.

I see here that many of you feel that it detracts from the look of a board by making the board seem inactive but I guess that depends on the board. On my board that has the archive there is still a lot of activity in the main part of the boards and on occasion someone will find something of interest in the archive section that they want to contribute to but for the most part people stay on the main boards.

I personally have found it to be useful and not detracting in any way from my board.

[Des]

I have found an archive board very useful, though we have had a problem or two.

Good Experiences:

- All the boards became tidy, and all the old threads with members who had long disappeared were cleaned up
- We didn't need to delete threads when teachers moved from one class to another
- We had clear reference whether or not a student attended a class, because all the threads were saved
- New members could read some of the things and view the memories and roleplaying quality while they waited to be sorted

Bad Experiences:

- I think we made a mistake. We enabled "Show Post Displaying where the thread was moved to" and then we deleted the post showing that. It turns out many of our boards now have negative or zero posts, no matter how many we had.

- We are one main admin and a few co-admins who were helping out, and so we had to post a long list of "what to move, what to delete, what to keep"

- Some people were offended that we moved their posts, and said they were Rping even though no one had posted there for a month or more [one of the requirments]

- People accidentally posted in the Archive Board, which we call Memories.

[britt86]

Well, I used to delete all the old threads when a 3 month term was over. So I wiped my board for the first 11 months it was around (I did an emergency term change once). Well, my members asked that I archived the threads instead because they liked to go back and read through.

So, 2 and a half years later, and the archive board still exists. I don't care either way, but I can see how many people would like to go through their history. Yes, it can be cluttered, but if utilized correctly can be great.

[Mr. Magic]

The pros and cons are perfect in some posts here!

I used to run a forums for a game, but the forums was only a part of my website for the game. I did have an archive area on the forums, but it was for my website in which I only had a limited amount of space for things such as picutes and text, so I made an archive section for the website on the forums so everyone can come and see what was done in the past.

Forumswise, I would probably put polls there that were done. Any updates to the archived polls would just be redone so to keep up to date with the forums. serving as a trash can? I'd rather keep that seperate so to see what is not accepted on the forums. As for reference to a particular thread, even if it's locked, someone can always link to it. But, I'd rather keep the actual threads in their respected areas so to keep it on-topic with each category.

[WilburyMania!]

I have a "Classics" board for threads that are well...classic.

I also have a "Garbage" board for spam posts. It's only viewable to me and the main admin.