Urgent question:
How much time is left before the ominous "Spring Cleaning" comes into effect? I will have some time on the coming weekend and will try to mark the threads that are worth being saved.
Until now, not a single admin has responded to the proposal of saving Bluelight's ADD in the whole; see posts from Enkidu (#2 & 3) and me (#22)!!!
- Murphy
I'm sorry, was post #19 not by an admin, trying to respond? We couldn't have missed that one, could we?
Here's the deal, as best I can offer at this point, and hopefully someone will read this
Urgent? No, not urgent. Obviously, we started this site-wide exercise over a month ago and this forum hasn't even been touched yet. We focused on the fatter forums first, and as we get free of those we can then look at the rest of the forums. Now, we're getting free enough to look at ADD, hence this thread getting kicked back up again.
Each forum is different, in terms of content and value, and they need to be evaluated as such. The best judge of how critical the HR data is would be the mods and members who live there day in and day out. This is why we bothered to post public notices like this thread. The alternative would be for an admin to not even look at the forums, just delete everything older than a certain date and move on - an approach I think we would all agree would be perhaps the worst, second only to deleting a forum altogether.
As we approach a forum for a prune, we take it up with the mods in their invisible mod thread, to gauge how much they can help with the process, how best to approach the project, and get an initial read on what they perceive as the crap to value ratio (again, each forum is different....so we start with the mods who run the place). We asked the ADD mods over a month ago - not even a response to say 'leave us alone' or 'can we hold off until we have time to look at it' or anything. No response at all.
Okay, sometimes mods are too busy, so the admin will then take the lead and try to get the prune done in a forum. However, we'll still try to enlist the members - whether the mods are available or not. Again, the members know the forum content, what is of real value, etc. So, we ask for their help with a public thread like this. The feedback you've provided is the kind of response we'd hoped for, as many forums have members that can't be bothered either. At least you've shown you do care about the information here. You (collective) have a very high sense of value on the content, and obviously don't see there is much to be removed, if any. Thank you for that feedback - the admin who are not regulars in here wouldn't know that, so it's good that we asked before simply deleting the whole history.
At this point, I'll state that I've been pruning other forums all over the place, with great benefits for those forums and the site overall. There
are benefits to be had - and that was the intent of my earlier post. I wasn't trying to shove the PRUNE down the forum's throat, nor ramrod my own personal non-ADD-knowing plans on the place. It was an attempt at showing that there are benefits to the process. BUT, as each forum is different, we are willing to work with the members to the best benefit of the forum. If there is little to nothing to remove, we can work it that way, but we ought to at least take a look at the threads to validate that statement rather than simply throwing up hands and saying "We dont want to lose anything!!! (But we don't want to actually look at it either
)".
Enkidu actually put in the effort to help differentiate quality from deletable, and for that I'm personally grateful (though without going back to read my words, I'm willing to bet I appeared to disregard it.....not my intent, but perhaps the image I presented). At least someone was willing to look at the content and give an educated review - that's all we were hoping for from these public notices (aka, cries for member input and help), to prevent us from blindly removing value.
I owe an apology, as I've been pruning other forums, I've jumped into this one still running in high gear and am confident I sounded like an uncaring prick. The fact that I've tried to engage you guys on this subject, hopefully, reflects that fact that I *do care* (though I may still be a prick
). At this point, I'm going to back off - I'll let the forum's assigned admin (phrozen) step in and see how to approach the prune (who knows, maybe there *is* nothing that gets removed), but it's his forum...not mine. It's his forum from the point of an admin, but the admin are generally in place to help the mods with forum operations, and generally work with them to find the best balance between the forum needs and the site needs.....hopefully those mods will show up in their mod thread to discuss it with him
In their absence, and by the nature of the fact that ultimately the forum belongs to the members...not mods, and even less so to admin.....I am confident he'll be in this thread to try and work with you guys on what makes the most sense for ADD.
I'll offer to help, but I'm not coming in with a chainsaw (never would have anyway). He may prefer to get some help from other sr. staff, I can't say. However, I am certain he will need, and ask for, your help - because you care about the content, because you KNOW the content and what can be removed versus what needs to be kept....and perhaps you can see a way to improve access of what is kept. Me? I just hope you all understand this was never intended to be a threat, or a command, and I personally never intended to come off as an asshole. But the prune is something that does benefit the site, and the forums, and by extension the members.
TLB out, with one last apology for confusion or angst caused by my presence. C'ya.
