Flarum: Improving the Forums through pruning

vimanuelt

Here is a script for pruning the Forums: https://forums.ghostbsd.org/d/352-flarum-prune-old-postssh

How This Script Improves the Forums

Keeps Content Fresh and Relevant
Old discussions that are no longer useful or accurate are automatically removed, ensuring that users engage with up-to-date information.
Reduces Cognitive Load for Users
By trimming stale threads, users can more easily focus on current and unresolved topics without sifting through legacy clutter.
Improves Signal-to-Noise Ratio
Outdated or unanswered posts are purged, making the forum’s search results and tag listings more concise and informative.
Encourages Documentation Flow
Important findings are encouraged to be formalised in maintained documentation (e.g., ReadTheDocs), instead of buried in ephemeral forum discussions.
Enhances Performance and Maintainability
A leaner database with fewer obsolete entries results in marginally better performance, faster backups, and easier moderation.
Establishes Lifecycle Discipline
Reinforces that the forum is for short-term discourse and support, not for indefinitely storing conversations, leading to clearer content governance.
Reduces Political Advocacy Risks
Automatically removing legacy content limits the lifespan of posts that may contain off-topic ideological discussions, political statements, or advocacy. This helps maintain the forum’s focus on technical and collaborative content, discouraging forum misuse as a platform for agenda-driven messaging.
Discourages Forum-as-Soapbox Mentality
The transient nature of content encourages brevity, relevance, and technical focus, reducing incentives for users to post long-form personal or political commentary that detracts from the project’s purpose.

grahamperrin

Do not prune.

ericbsd

grahamperrin No worries, I do not intend to prune the forum. The forum's performance has nothing to do with the database. Also, I do not see the point of removing history when many posts in the old forum are still relevant.

I am looking at this discussion.

vimanuelt

Prune the forum: excise obsolete threads; reclaim space; and optimize performance. Should one decline, to what end is one's advocacy for GhostBSD? :-)

vimanuelt

By updating the documentation, we shall have fulfilled our enhancement objective, to the undoubted benefit of our users; pruning, in turn, will yield no untoward effects. :-)

https://forums.ghostbsd.org/d/344-proposal-for-a-consolidated-support-and-documentation-model

A public forum is no fitting venue in which to enshrine one’s legacy posthumously. ;-) One could use Github for that. :-)