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Spring Cleaning 2010 and 2011 - down under style

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TheLoveBandit

TheLoveBandit

Retired Never Was, Coulda been wannabe
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Getting to the point ...
It's that time again, guys and girls :)

The admin will be dropping notices into each forum in the coming weeks to let the regulars know that we will be pruning out all thread 6 months of age and older. We'll try to give you members, and the mods 1-2 weeks to realize this and try to save any valuable threads before they get lost in the spring cleaning frenzy. Either REPORT such valuable threads, or PM a mod with a link, or even reply to the thread to bring it back into the living - any of these methods can raise the attention of the mods to the 'valuable' thread and they can then decide to archive it or not (it remains at their discretion, and no, they don't have to save your special thread if it really doesn't warrant it).

The outcome of this is two fold. First, this should speed the server up a bit to not have to manage such a large database of dead threads. Secondly the search function will go quicker and not come back with those other 450 hits that are useless today :)
 
Just a little update:


All forums are now put on notice for the impending PRUNE across the entire site. Contact your local mods with threads worth saving. For those wondering, we do not expect this to drop your post count and we're trying to ensure that's how it all goes down. However, if post counts do drop, we're sure you'll build them right back up ;) If your post count then gets dropped below 50, you will NOT get pushed back down into the GLer usergroup. Once you are a BLer, you will remain a Bler.
 
Next Update:

Frequent question - will post counts drop? We're taking every step to ensure this is not going to happen.

Frequent question - what about the archives? That's where the good stuff is intended to be saved from regular pruning (provided such a thread isn't simply kicked back into active discussion). So, anything in an archive is accepted as having been reviewed AND saved already, the archives will not be subject to the pruning process.

Frequent screaming whine - 2 freaking weeks? Are you kidding me? Well, no, we're not kidding but 2 weeks is proving to be a bit unrealistic (ya think, TLB? 8) ). 2 Weeks is not a hard deadline, and we're working with the mods on how to best handle each forum on a case-by-case basis but overall the entire site will be reviewed in an effort to trim the fat. This may take several weeks, possibly a month or more, for some of the heavier trafficked forums or those who have not seen a prune in 5+ years (thereby inheriting a LOT of stuff to review before we clean house).

Frequent question - TLB how did you ever get to be so sexy? Secrets I share with Ricardo Montalban and Richard Gere. It's a select club.
 
For those who were wondering things like:

  1. Which forums have the most posts, and therefore the most to lose?
  2. When will *my* forum be done with this?
  3. When we're done, how well did we do?

We provide you the following quick breakdown of the forums and their threads/posts. As a forum completes the pruning process, we'll update the right column with where they ended up when it was all said and done.

Code: 
[b]FORUM (oldest posts)			OLD:Threads_Posts	NEW:Threads_Posts[/b]

[COLOR="RoyalBlue"]Support (2003) 					1,936_19,036	440_9,423

New Member Introductions (2006)			4,025_34,194	1,663_17,141

Ecstasy Discussion (2006)			11,562_238,695	3,299_98,491
Cannabis Discussion (2003)			6,351_121,753	1,572_49,680
Steroid Discussion (2004)			1,822_22,645	241_5,524
Psychedelic Drugs (2001)			15,882_268,232	10,168_230,375
Other Drugs (2003)				41,089_526,837	14,633_226,127

Drug Studies (2006)				79_801		80_825
Drugs in the Media (2003)			9,782_97,134	1,800_40,366
-  The Front Page (2003)			1,122_24,535	29_1,180
Basic Drug Discussion (2004)			12,347_134,085	4,333_54,092
Advanced Drug Discussion (2004)			3,169_41,397	3,136_43,853
The Dark Side (2002)				7,330_151,896	1,927_72,162
Trip Reports (2000)				5,527_57,258	5,305_58,489
Drug Culture (2004)				4,444_185,137	954_106,621

Healthy Living (2000)				6,513_63,947	871_24,178
Current Events and Politics (2003)		12,332_225,713	2,123_79,526
Sex, Love and Relationships (2003)		11,062_265,295	2,523_119,331
Philosophy and Spirituality (2003)		3,377_92,413	627_28,766
Education & Careers (2004)			771_11,715	397_7,838
Legal Discussion (2001)				3,299_27,577	1,274_16,062
Second Opinion (2003)				6,311_125,216	1,670_72,308
Science & Technology (2005)			1,567_17,007	445_8,554
The Lounge (2006)				5,642_609,651	1,961_363,678

Music & DJs (2003)				5,931_83,063	497_27,772
Non-Electronic Music Discussion (2003)		2,941_107,747	532_65,689
Words (2002)					15,539_73,578	14,441_73,070
Film & Television (2003)			2,903_73,270	2,316_67,385
Sports & Gaming (2007)				742_19,162	403_16,709

Australian Drug Discussion (2006)		11,025_166,526	10,190_166,008
Australian Social & Events (2004)		4,005_365,354	2,054  	186,538

European & African Drug Discussion (2005)	7,026_324,550	1,362_170,286
European & African Events (2006)		489_4,871	58_535

North & South American Drug Discussion (2003)	1,536_29,943	215_21,594
North & South American Social (2004)		1,540_28,441	285_17,047
North & South American Events			1,997_68,895	487_40,128
- Northeast USA (2006) 				547_2,744	76_295
- Midwest USA (2006)				937_31,354	106_2,676
- Other North and South American Regions (2006)	309_1,710	54_209[/COLOR]
 
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Our thanks to everyone, as we were able to slim our database down from 2.3Gb to 1.3Gb. This has also enabled us to use the recent server downtime to optimize some of the server functions, and hopefully you will see some improvements in performance. The biggest bang, however, will be not having to sift through oodles of bullshit threads when you search for something :D
 
B to the U to the M to the P​


It's that time again, SPRING CLEANING (if you're in the Southern Hemisphere). Rather than another thread, we'll re-use this old one so you have some history on things :)

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Staff,

We appreciate all that the mods and members did with the last PRUNE we ran in mid-2009. However, we are due to go through it again. Luckily that last one was more painful due to several forums having not been reviewed in years and years....this time, we're looking at only trimming back threads without replies before 2010, which is only about 8 months of last years threads.

Stated more clearly - on the chopping block is any thread not replied to in 2010, but still floating in your forum.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Based on our server stats, you'll notice the forums are ranked based on how much server space they take up:

Code: 
[u]Forum					Posts		% of database[/u]
The Lounge				441831		9.9882
Psychedelic Drugs			357909		8.091
Archive - The Lounge			248500		5.6177
Other Drugs				210065		4.7488
Archive - EADD				184515		4.1712
Archive - OD				171141		3.8689
European &amp, African Drug Discussion	152946		3.4576
Archive - Australian Drug Discussion	140427		3.1746
Archive - Australian Social		114252		2.5828
Basic Drug Discussion			113940		2.5758
Ecstasy Discussion			104233		2.3563
Archive - SLR				90863		2.0541
Sex, Love and Relationships		77063		1.7421
Archive - DC				76698		1.7339
Film &amp, Television			75305		1.7024
The Dark Side				74223		1.6779
Cannabis Discussion			73586		1.6635
Drug Culture				71415		1.6144
Archive - CEP				71393		1.6139
Archive - Words				70550		1.5949
Archive - TDS				69495		1.571
Archive - ED				67703		1.5305
Australian Drug Discussion		67171		1.5185
Advanced Drug Discussion		65968		1.4913
Australian Social &amp, Events		61499		1.3903
Archive - SO				56302		1.2728
Archive - CD				54062		1.2221
Current Events and Politics		51744		1.1697
Archive - TR				51247		1.1585
Archive - NEMD				49440		1.1177
Second Opinion				5454		1.0276

You'll notice half of our top 10 'fatty' areas are archives - fair enough, they were set up with the intention of holding key reference information good for years. However, of those fat archives, several are social in nature....which begs several questions, such as
  • Isn't 'social' content primarily transient and relative, such that it is important to those at the time, but not so much a reference needed forever?

  • If it *is* such an awesome social content thread that it ought be referenced forever....should it not be in BoBL?

  • How much of those social archive threads are ones that got filled to 1000 posts and archived? Are they really that valuable? Do the images and links in them still work? Is it feasible to either remove them wholesale or perhaps save the 50-200 good posts from each one and get rid of the rest?

I'm sure you can come up with some more questions of your own, including the counter question of - "so, why keep social archives at all?" There is still some merit on keeping local archives in social forums (ie, SLR or SO would have some threads good for reference within their archives, which are best kept in a sub-forum for UTFSE moments). But yeah, we're going to ask for a review of the archives as well.

Why? Why are we being so cruel and heartless to not only have you prune your forums, but actually review the archives as well? Because we're bored, and there hasn't been enough whinging from staff lately aside from a few isolated issues. This one can piss everyone off ;) No, seriously, you guys have probably seen the threads in SUPPORT regarding errors and slow loads, and you have probably experienced these yourself to some degree. We need to trim back the database to improve things, as we seem to be up against the limits of our hardware :\ But to go one further, we've discussed our pending upgrade(s) and these are much, much easier to do with a smaller database.

To improve our bang-for-the-buck, we'll attack forums according to that listing above on database size (this lets you know when your forum is due to be pruned), but in fairness ALL forums will be reviewed.

Per the process last year, we'd like to follow what worked well by posting notice in ANNOUNCEMENTS as well as forum specific headers when a forum is being pruned. We'll create a temporary 'PENDING DELETION' folder for each forum as it is under review, allowing for the members to pitch in and bump things or ask that they be saved (mods shouldn't have to do all the work).

This thread is here for any questions or feedback as we head into this. Your help and support is essential, so we thank you.


PRUNE COMING NOW

EXPECT AN ANNOUNCEMENT

NOBODY IS EXEMPT

​


For any discussion on this event, please see our sister thread in SUPPORT - Spring Cleaning 2010 - down under style. Thank you.


Cheers =D
 
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This stalled after a few months of hitting the fattest forums, but we need to follow thru before any upgrades can be performed. In an effort to keep the public more up to date with our progress, we are providing the following dashboard:


BLUELIGHT FEEDBACK - DONE


BLUELIGHT BASICS - DONE


FOCUS FORUMS

* Drug FAQs - DONE
* Ecstasy Discussion - DONE
* Cannabis Discussion - DONE
* Steroid Discussion - IN PROCESS
* Psychedelic Drugs - IN PROCESS
* Other Drugs - DONE


DRUG DISCUSSION

* Drug Studies - DONE
* Drugs in the Media - TBD
* Basic Drug Discussion - IN PROCESS
* Advanced Drug Discussion - TBD
* The Dark Side - DONE
* Trip Reports - TBD
* Drug Culture - TBD


COMMUNITY

* Healthy Living - TBD
* Current Events and Politics - IN PROCESS
* Sex, Love and Relationships - DONE
* Philosophy and Spirituality - DONE
* Education and Careers - TBD
* Legal Discussion - DONE
* Second Opinion - IN PROCESS
* Science and Technology - DONE
* The Lounge - DONE


ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

* Electronic Music Discussion - DONE
* Non-Electronic Music Discussion - IN PROCESS
* Words - DONE
* Film & Television - DONE
* Sports and Gaming - TBD


AUSTRALIA & ASIA - DONE


EUROPE & AFRICA - DONE


NORTH & SOUTH AMERICA
* NADDAS - TBD
* NAE - IN PROCESS


BLUELIGHT HISTORY - DONE


GALLERY & BLOGS - DONE


Additionally, www.pillreports.com is hosted on the same server as Bluelight:

Pillreports.com - Not being touched
Click to expand...
 
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