How about more than 12 months?

I'm in favour of all the posts...

JJ

As Jacob points out, most of the forums only contain data going back about 12 months or so.

But I have raised the point and we are going to look at bringing over everything from this current forum. That may still end up being 12 months.

Many of the oldies that are preserved were preserved for a specific reason back then (a few years ago) that not longer exists, but there hasn't been an effective way to go back to them to let them expire.

I have received some counter arguments, too, that having much older data pollutes search results because a user may pull up messages with answers that applied to an older version but are wrong, and sometimes dangerous, in relationship to a newer version of the software.

Anyway, the amount of data being imported is being re-visited.

John

As it is, threads generally fall into the Archive in question after aboput 7 months and into the abyss after a year. This means that generally the threads will be carried over.

The exception is the oldies: threads that have been preserved indefinitely, some of them bundled as the last threads before the Archive, some of them bundled as the last threads in he Archive.

In the Illustrator Windows forum there are 23 oldies out of 1046 threads, and in the Archive there are 16 oldies out of 1065 threads, totalling 39 oldies out of 2111 threads, 2%.

So if all threads were carried over, 98% of them would be no older than 1 year, and everything would be saved.

It should be noted that the oldies have been preserved for a reason, and it would take a greater effort to go to the ends of forums/archives and pick them up separately.

So why not bring the lot?

MacMinute's founder, Stan Flack, died.

MacTech took over MacMinute's Forums.

MacTech also wanted to updated their own forums.

Somehow, they managed to merge all the threads and posts from MacMinute's forums with the threads and posts from MacTech.

Not only did the transition roll out pretty flawlessly, they somehow managed to incorporate all old threadsgoing back almost 10 years, and hundreds of thousands of posts(or more)from both sets of forums, they were able to transfer all of MacMinute's registered user accounts and merge that roster with the standing MacTech roster.

And guess what? Even though we all know that people are often quite resistant to change, the new format and forums were greeted with almost universal acclaim.

There are several lessons to be taken from that.

Many fora have their whole history since the beginning...
How many posts does this place have for the moment? (Adobe+Macromedia)

favor... since the majority of threads are really asking the same questions that have been answered elsewhere, if people can point out specific topics that should be preserved, something may be able to be worked out to preserve the good and not drag clutter along.

I know I'll be putting in a bid to be sure the FAQ forums are carried along.

More than 12 months, please.

Keep Smiling

Gets my vote...