| There are some 'title' notes in there that you probably shouldn't
get rid of (for instance For Sale, Wanted, Introductions etc...)
I haven't looked through the lot, but other things to consider are
early notes on a topic which is still used. Keeping the old replies
to these may be useful. Obviously, this might take up more of your
time and effort than is justified in non-work conference moderation.
J.R.
|
| I've had to do this exercise on a conference before. It's stunning how
much you can save by a simple reorganise of the file. I can mail you
details if you want to know how. Aside from that, there are two basic
ways of saving space. Wholesale deletion such as that proposed, and
selective deletion.
The former option, especially in a conference such as this, is really
not a good idea. Much of the information in here is factual reference
data, of a type that doesn't age. It would be a shame to lose it in a
non-selective axe-slice.
The latter option is very time-consuming, and requires quite a lot of
thought. I'd suggest that unless you intend to destroy the factual side
of this conference, (its only saving grace imho) you drop option 1.
Part of the reason the conference is so large, is that noters have run
out of control. You need to decide whether it's a chat conference, or
a reference conference. If it's the later, then you have to moderate it
strictly. There is a compromise possible, but then you have to be
alert, and prepared to move notes around to an appropriate topic.
Because this conference is so large, and so busy, this is an enormous
task.
Old for sale and wanted notes should be purged on a regular basis, say
after two weeks. Chat notes, which need to be controlled as to where
they spread, need to be regularly purged. Noters who start new notes
need to have themn moved to the appropriate topic. Soon, a conference
has a tone of regulation and order about it, and the noters respond.
This conference, as has been recently noted, contains a whole pile of
hot air. Clear that out, and you're more than half-way there. You'll
need help, ask for volunteers. Also, take a good look at PAN, it's
vital for this exercise, and for controlling the growth of a conference
when it's "live".
Laurie.
|
| Re Selective deletion
*If* this approach is taken, one step would be to do a simple directory
listing that shows all of the topics and how many replies each of them
has. Topics with less than a certain number (10, 20 ?) of replies will
often contain very little 'reference data' and will generally be
suitable candidates for deletion.
Others may be old requests for 'dated' information, which may show
up in the original title (all manual effort to find these notes).
Of course, deleting these threads does not free up so much space,
but can be done in stages. If a large enough number of topics can
be deleted, then I guess that some form of file optimisation will
then be beneficial.
J.R.
|
| The file HAS already been compressed.
For sale, and Wanted have both been purged down to a couple of months.
Starting again is possible, but usually the old conference still hangs
on as an archive, so space isn't really saved.
Although some of the notes I mentioned may be reference, people don't
tend to search, but rather just re-ask the same question again.
In my view the best way is simply to remove unwanted notes.
I've identified those that are nearly 2 years and over, another tack is
those notes that have in excess of 500 (arbitary) replies whittle back
down to the last 300 (again arbitary)
I would say this conference ably combines reference and chat, I see no
reason to start heavy moderating.
Richard
|