There's tons of relevant and current information in many of the old posts. That was one of the thing I liked about this forum. Call it housekeeping and filter out the useless stuff. Oh, and instant chat would be great like Mike said.

 

I agree on the instant chat!! But the old crud does not get in the way and it could be useful for others!

 

The Blazer Forum had a lot of trouble with people in their instant chat and had to remove it about 18 months ago... I'll add it to the list of things I'll discuss with Packie.

I cleaned up the forum back in 07, but you are right, its time to go through it again and prune some useless threads.

 

It is useful to have the old threads in the forums. The site is like a giant reference guide where members can come and search for threads that may have info relevant to their issue(s).What may be irrelevant to one may be useful to another,(along the same lines as the old saying ,"One man's junk is another man's treasure."
Concerning the instant chat, there is an option in forums that run vBulletin software called "Live Topic". It instantly updates a thread in real time as a member is posting. If you were in the process of reading or responding in a thread, a small white box would appear and let you know that there is a new post added while you were there. This helps sometimes when responding and more info becomes available or somebody posts something that may make you want to modify your reply.
I'm not sure if the current version of the software in this forum has that option available as I've seen it in other forums running version 3.8.0 and higher.

 

Yeah it is useful to have old threads, but not unanswered or unanswerable tech questions and illegitimate clutter. We are very selective in deleting.

The current version is 3.7.5

 

Yeah, I know the current version is listed at the bottom of this website. I'm not sure if 3.7.5 supports "Live Topic" as I've seen it on other forums running 3.8.0 and higher. It may be a new option that is afforded with the newer versions. They like to add new options as an incentive to upgrade, but if you were interested in that option I'm sure a check into it would confirm it's availability for your version.
I see your point on pruning old threads out like the ones you listed .That is a good idea. I didn't take those into consideration, rather I looked at the site as a whole and didn't consider the unanswered ones or the spam/advertising threads/posts.Doesn't that also save on bandwith and the servers, which is good?

 

I don't have much to do with the modifications and add-ons. I am what I like to call, the Resident Admin. I have to put in requests with the higher ups that own the site to get anything done.
The old posts do take up hard drive space, but this forum is relatively small as compared with the other IB/AFU sites such as Dodgeforum, HDforum, or Mustangforum.