Just a suggestion.

[britishbandit]

I've noticed that there are a lot of posts on here that havn't been looked at in months. For the sake of space, wouldn't it be better to delete these posts? In general, any posts that come up often or are popular questions or information get stickys. So why not keep the stickys, and get rid of the old posts that are no longer "in use", leaving the ones that are still getting responses and views. There are also quite a lot of members that havn't been to the site in months. This isn't meant to be rude, but shouldn't they be deleted too? They could always rejoin again later if they decided to use the forum again. I just feel this is a lot of wasted space. Maybe this could also help speed up the forum a bit. I realize there have been recent problems, but could the amount of "no longer in use" posts and members be adding to these problems? Even if they aren't, are they things that really need to stay?
JUST a suggestion...LOL

[Cassiepeia]

This site is about education and the majority of posts, whether they're in use or not, are valuable to this site.

We have a lot of members who just lurk. I assume they enjoy reading the information we provide. This place isn't just about keeping things moving..like I said it's about education and sharing information so deleting people and posts because they're not as active or current as others would defeat the purpose of the site. IMO anyway.

EDIT: Oh and just because a question or topic is popular doesn't mean it's going to get stickied. The stickies are generally for 'official' Global Paw threads (although not all of those are stickied either).

Cass.

[linnie]

I understand where you are coming from bandit but cas is right many people who visit the site actually do go back and refer to links from a long time back. While we have members like you who are activley involved there are many who come as guests and cant actually post but get information.

[Crossfire Bulldogs]

I understand where your coming from British but as Cass mentioned, this forum and it's owners are all for education and while not every single post may be of use to everyone it doesn't mean that it won't be of use to someone.

Our recent site issues were not due to an overload of inactive members or posts long since forgotten but simply one of a growing board still using an older version of VBulletin which was never meant to hold a site as large as ours. Rather than have the continued issues time after time it was decided that an upgrade was in order ( although it came suddenly after another glitch rather than being scheduled ) thus the down time but needed in order to make our member's future experiences here great.

We consider Global Paw our home away from home and in our opinion, no "family member" should ever be left behind, it doesn't matter to us if someone hasn't logged on in well over a year, GP is always here for them if they choose to return....our doors will always be open.

One of the features we've had here is the search engine where members and guests alike can type in any topic and get a complete listing of every post that has ever been made on it. This particular search engine was used often to pull up older posts that related to their own current questions / concerns and I've watched many a member and guest alike read through posts from over two years ago. My point is, if it helps them and gives them information or direction then why not keep it? We all know how much bad information is out there in cyber space and since we have the chance to keep good info out there then why not....if it helps even one dog owner then it's well worth it!

[britishbandit]

No no, I agree, and understand completely. I just found there were threads here and there that really didn't help out anyone. I am happy to browse through the older posts too, don't get me wrong. But if it meant GP having problems, I'd just rather see them go than hold up the site. But since space was not an issue, it's all honkey dorey LOL