Hi,
I absolutely cannot understand the ill-considered decision to delete all personal ad and meetup threads and posts. What kind of signal does this send to users when their posts are deleted after less than a day? I think this is a sure-fire way to scare users away and chase them off. Even if the threads are a week, a month or a year old, you can't tell from their age alone whether they have been dealt with.
And the many deleted posts in the Bestiality Discussion section contained important knowledge for reference. Apart from that, a lot of work went into the posts; I alone spent many hours researching, which were now wasted. Users feel that their commitment to the forum and other users is not really appreciated.
I strongly doubt that this will increase their motivation to get involved and help others. Why invest effort if there is a risk of deletion? Users will then limit themselves to very superficial posts.
As an admin and moderator in one forum for 25 years and a visitor and active member in around 200 other forums over the years, I can say that other forums never delete users' knowledge or specialist posts, as this is precisely what makes forums attractive.
When other forums want to clean up, they try to get rid of inactive members, for example. They are notified and told that if they do not log in within a specified period, their account and posts will be deleted.
This alone would remove a lot of ballast from Zooville. Banned or otherwise blocked users and their posts could be deleted without further ado. A similar procedure could be followed for personal ad and meetup threads and posts, but with a time limit. Thread creators are notified when their thread is one year old that it will be deleted and that they should create a new one if necessary.
There are other useful ways to tidy up and make the forum clearer. All Meetup threads should be moved from the discussion sections to the relevant Personal Ad and Meetup sections. Another option would be to close threads with topics or questions that have clearly been resolved to prevent further posts. If users still want to contribute to a closed thread, they can send a private message to the thread creator. However, the thread creator should be allowed to reopen the closed thread if he believes it is not yet resolved. That much tolerance should be granted.
For me, the most important thing is that people talk to each other and don't just act. Most of the crap in the world happens because people don't talk to each other enough.
Kind regards
CdB
