@cigarino and anyone else.
We are not deleting all threads. What I have been doing is cleaning out threads that have not been used for a certain period of time of UPLOADS, not text.
The text history here will remain.
Also, I have been cleaning out threads that are primarily UPLOAD threads and closing them a bit early.
If you do not post the first post in a thread as an upload, I dont need to delete the whole thread to get to it.
I can just delete the uploads and not the text.
What I HAD been doing is cleaning out threads with no replies for around 7 days and removing the uploads from them. Leaving the text intact. I then locked the threads so that I could keep track of which ones I had cleaned.
I NOW plan on changing this to 14 days with no reply, since some threads seem to be being closed before they are done being used.
Threads specifically for uploads will still need to be cleaned out at some point but I can hold out on them longer than I have been. IF we want to maintain a low cost server for many years, this is pretty much unavoidable. Otherwise we will venture into steadily increasing storage costs over the years.
Again, if the first post is not an upload, I can leave all text in these threads intact as well.
We are primarily after the picture files here.
I have just been trying to stay ahead of the game. We are in no danger of running out of space at the current time.
I hope this explains it better. We will have a text history here that people can search through. Its the pictures and stuff that take up all the space.
too funny!