Very good question. The database is getting larger as we speak. Actually, because we speak
5 years sounds like a reasonable time frame, there should be a cron job (scheduled task) on the server, to delete everything older than 5 years… say… once every week or so.
The problem with deleting old posts is that many of them are full of helpful information that people can find on google searches. The forum is supposed to be a valuable resource for such information.
But things like benefits, treatment and medications etc change every few years anyway.
I would have thought the main site would contain some sort of static information that was updated (I know people would volunteer to help with this) with this information where as the forum would have some sort of privacy/information overload protection.
We could delete the old lounge and unusual beliefs threads… keep the rest… just a thought. 90% of lounge and 100% of unusual beliefs are disposable, imo.
As it stands, the database will continue to grow and so will do hosting costs, or am I missing something?
At least, has anybody done a projection, how much time can this forum keep running at the current pace with costs within a given budget?
If monitored properly I don’t see the problem with ‘unusual beliefs’ . It should of course be about offering support to counter such thoughts and not, for example, person A saying " Martians poisoned my coffee" only for person B to reply " Those Venusians are devious fiends as well".
People need to acknowledge they experience delusions/ unusual beliefs as part of the healing process . Encouraging people to go further down a delusional rabbit hole is something that should be promptly stamped out though.