I've had sometime to think about what was discussed earlier in this thread:
http://tsug.net/index.php?showtopic=2787Part of this is laziness and part of it is not wanting to upset the apple cart too much at a point where the site isn't receiving massive traffic anyways, but I've changed my mind (although my mind was never made up in the first place, but I was leaning towards one course of action).
So here's what I've decided:
Forum software will remain as is for the foreseeable future. Nothing drastic is going to happen over the summer like I suggested previous.
At some point in the future, I will consider trying another upgrade that retains the posts and uploads like I tried once before. This will be a lot more difficult for me than starting over fresh, but retaining the content manually I wanted saved (games, the gallery content, thread image uploads, etc.) would have taken as much work anyways, so it's a wash either way.
However, there may be some changes anyways even without software changes. Here's what to expect:
I liked the idea of starting over somewhat. So I may do that in one way. I'm going to begin removing some old stuff from the forum I don't really care to have here anymore. This may include:
Old threads. Like say from 2010-2011, especially the ones right after we did the last move. I don't care to have those here anymore. Most of the posters from back then left anyways. These would be moved to a vault invisible to normal members. They may be deleted later.
Long threads that have been going on since the beginning of the forum but don't contain real discussion and could be started over. For example, the "How Are You Feeling Thread." The threads would be moved to the vault, and then new threads would be started with fresh posts.
Forums and subforums that either have remained unused for a long time or have very little threads in them. A few threads may be moved to other forums, but I may just junk all the threads in a few of them entirely.
Inactive user accounts. A lot of people signed up that never even posted once. I may just junk the ones that did that five years ago or more. Banned members may also be removed. Inactive members who posted but never came back after several years have passed may eventually be deleted as well, but I probably won't do that for a long while and probably last if at all. The rationale for me is I don't think it's really good to horde user data for long periods that isn't being used. I don't think that's good for security purposes. I may or may not do this, but it's a possibility of something I may do further down the road.
Things that won't be removed for sure:
Anything with substantive effort put into it like dojinshi threads, fanart threads, etc.
I, however, reserve the right to change my mind about what to do with the forum at any point in the future, but for now this is what I'm going with until I say otherwise.