Cleaning Up Non-Technical Postings .

[Bob_Roller]

I was looking at the Chit Chat, Off Topic Discussions and General Announcements .

89 pages in Chit Chat 37 in Off Topic and 46 in General Announcments .

They go back to November, 2006 .

Anyone have any objections if I delete all but the last 2 years of postings in these categories ?

It will mean losing postings to your profile if that means anything to you .

[Rob Valdez 79 R65]

I don't care about posting count, but I do care about having a library from which to do research.  (Just did it a few days ago.)

Are we too much of a burden on Justin's son's server?

Do we need to make more donations?

[Bob_Roller]

I was going through them and I don't think anyone really cares about most of the postings in these sections .

Does anyone really care about an announcement or off topic dicsussion made over 7 years ago

Just putting it out there to see what response I get .

I cleaned up 40 pages of Trading Post listings going back to November, 2006 a little over a year ago and no one noticed .

[Rob Valdez 79 R65]

So you need a for instance?
OK.

The other day when I was thinking of a get together, I wanted to remember a camp ground in god-knows-where (Boyer Station Campground in WV), but I used the search feature with the keyword "railroad" (there is a nearby rr that gives rides).
Sure enough, it was in General Announcements - Feb. 2011.  That would have been deleted and lost forever.

But do what you will.

I guess I should clean up the "members" map, as well.

[Bob_Roller]

I put this up for feed back from fellow members , that's all   !!!!!

[Barry]

When cleaning up servers to save storage space there is a simple law of diminishing returns.  It's much more effective to delete a few large files than a thousand small ones.  

I know our upload limit allows unnecessarily large images  but we probably need it at the current level for PDF's and the like.

It depends to some extent on the computer display size but it should be obvious to anyone that once an image exceeds 800x600 that besides wasting space it's too big to be seen effectively by most users. We should have a means of providing that guidance to anyone who displays a very large image without them feeling jumped on.  It might help in some cases to provide a link to some free image editing software like paint.net.

If we want to get a bit more advanced, when the same image is posted again even several years later it doesn't need to be upload again to take up more space. You can just insert a link to the previous post.

[Justin B.]

I think we have unlimited storage so I would prefer not to have to do any pruning other than old trading post entries.  I can look into the possibility of "archiving" some older stuff as long as it can be searchable...

[Rob Valdez 79 R65]

Yeah, old trade posts are fine with me, too.

[Luca]

Justin, does the unlimited storage mean we can upload images into a post directly from our computer instead of going through a 3rd party image hosting site?

If it were me I wouldn't delete the non technical stuff except for the trading post.  Every now and then you want to find something obscure, like a campground in West Virginia.  Also, sometimes posts change direction and overlap the technical and general categories.

I think keeping the map cleaned up is a good idea  [smiley=thumbup.gif]

[nhmaf]

I cleaned out several pages of old trading post stuff back in the fall.   I was planning to do a spring cleaning too in a little bit.

I think it is important to dump the old/sold trading post items.   I don't care about the off topic/chit chat items but if we are not running into a problem with storaage there, I don't see as much logical need to get rid of them.   Occasionally, I have found some old nuggets of info in there when doing searches.

[Bob_Roller]

I thought I'd put it out there and see what kind of a response I would get .

I didn't think anyone would care about it .

I won't touch anything else !!!

[Ed Miller]

It doesn't matter that much to me, just don't try to revoke my godhood.  I would have to smite you.

[Justin B.]

does the unlimited storage mean we can upload images into a post directly from our computer instead of going through a 3rd party image hosting site?
 

Yes, within reason.  I have set some file size limitations but they should accommodate fairly large images.  I set a 3 meg filesize limit and the software should "prune" huge images to 1024 x 768 when viewing through the forum.