“replacing EE 1.x documentation and support resources with resources focused on EE” does not sound like removing user’s content from the forum without warning.

I agree. When I originally read the blog post, it did not cross my mind that the restructure would include removing forum posts. While I understand your reasons for it, I have a hard time justifying it at this time when many still rely on 1.6.x and will do so for quite some time.

I think that button is a much better way to handle this, but please: Give the community some more time than 10 days. I for one is on vacation right now, and I bet im not alone.

Be clearer, and get the word out to the community leaders about anything being taken away, so that people really know exactly what they stand to lose if they dont get their lazy asses up from their ...garden chair.

Great move of restoring. <3

The restoration of active threads in the Third Party Development forums should now be fully complete.

Dylan Smith/ContextDesign - 29 June 2010 02:25 AM

Instead of nuking information that may or may not be outdated, and may or may not be damn valuable to people, why not preface any thread with a last entry date older than XXX ( a few months or so?) with a note saying that the info is probably outdated, as it applies to 1.6. I can’t believe you’re hurting for storage space or anything.

this is a much better solution than deleting things that you didn’t create yourself.  I can think of no better way to make a community not trust you with the storage of future conversations than to delete years of participation.

Ty, Dylan, to be clear, we intentionally kept all information that still applied to 1.6.  And I don’t think it’s fair to expect average and new users to see a notice, connect the dots, and understand what that content then means for them today.  They have no context at all to determine what information would still be good, what has changed, and what has become plain old FUD.

ender - 29 June 2010 07:53 PM

Dylan Smith/ContextDesign - 29 June 2010 02:25 AM

Instead of nuking information that may or may not be outdated, and may or may not be damn valuable to people, why not preface any thread with a last entry date older than XXX ( a few months or so?) with a note saying that the info is probably outdated, as it applies to 1.6. I can’t believe you’re hurting for storage space or anything.

this is a much better solution than deleting things that you didn’t create yourself.  I can think of no better way to make a community not trust you with the storage of future conversations than to delete years of participation.

Hi Ty,

99.9% of the information deleted needs to be deleted primarily because it is outdated and harmful to the community. We know this based on years of experience in providing tech support and curating these forums.

We believe in pruning and removing information as it leads to better quality current information.

Let’s put this in perspective. Over the years we have removed over 700,000 forum threads and well over 1,000,000 posts. This is the first time we’ve had a misstep in the process. And we’ve corrected it in less than 24 hours by the direct involvement of the President and the CTO. I hope that establishes enough trust and shows our commitment level.

All the data and experience we have (collected over the last 7+ years) demonstrates conclusively that pruning the data is the right decision in terms of supporting our products and providing the best technical support to our community. Until the data proves differently, that is the philosophical way we’re going to continue to operate our forums.

Here is just one example. When you search on our forums, there are over 1,000,000 useless posts, including ones that have harmful information to the current versions of EE, that are simply no longer available. We could go on and provide a number of other reasons as to why archiving the vast majority of this data in anyway is simply not a good idea.

Going forward what we need to do is provide ways for the community to influence what needs to be preserved and to redefine what we used to consider current. In other words, there needs to be a solution that allows the community proper ownership in the pruning process to ensure that the gems amidst the hundreds of thousands of outdated and potential harmful information are preserved in a seamless fashion. This conversation has greatly influenced that and again, I want to thank everyone for the feedback in that regard.

I agree that pruning in the past has gone hardly noticed.  I have never noticed complaints nor run into an issue with pruning before.  However, the user base is growing, new versions are being added, more third party developers are releasing add-ons and things are generally getting more complex.  I think there will be growing pains along the way and forums do have their limitations.

I’m thinking there must be a better way.  I’m also not sure that pruning those posts will significantly cut down on the confusion (but you guys know about this better than I do.)  At one time I used to simply run a simple search to get the info I needed, now I have to use the advanced options and be more selective because of the mingling of info between 1.6 and 2.x.  So I do see how people can get confused.

I wonder if another option for the future might be to allow users to “tag” forum posts.  It shouldn’t be too much more work for the user to select an EE version from a drop-down list when making a new forum thread.  Perhaps interim tags for older posts could be added by date (pre beta release) or simply tagged as “archive.”  The simple search feature might filter out archived posts by default (advanced option only.)

Also, did you guys have to obliterate our post counts also?    Apparently you pruned over 4,000 of my old posts.  It might be a nice nod to people who have written a lot of posts to keep those numbers intact.

ender - 29 June 2010 07:53 PM

Dylan Smith/ContextDesign - 29 June 2010 02:25 AM

Instead of nuking information that may or may not be outdated, and may or may not be damn valuable to people, why not preface any thread with a last entry date older than XXX ( a few months or so?) with a note saying that the info is probably outdated, as it applies to 1.6. I can’t believe you’re hurting for storage space or anything.

this is a much better solution than deleting things that you didn’t create yourself.  I can think of no better way to make a community not trust you with the storage of future conversations than to delete years of participation.

100% Agreed, I often found solutions to issues i was having (even in ee2.0) on threads that are now missing, now finding those solutions is much more difficult or new threads are having to be created for people to share the same information that was shared long ago.

@Leslie I understand your point completely and I also full heartily support going headstrong into 2.x and putting 1.x on the back burner. just wish that there was some sort of an archive or big flag on posts to make users aware that the information may not be accurate for the current version of the system or something of the sort rather than just removing it completely (particularly since in this prune session a ton of still useful data was lost).

John Fuller - 30 June 2010 10:05 AM

Also, did you guys have to obliterate our post counts also?    Apparently you pruned over 4,000 of my old posts.  It might be a nice nod to people who have written a lot of posts to keep those numbers intact.

I am afraid that’s not an option with the Forum module. Those numbers always reflect the status quo and are frequently recalculated. Hey, I lost about 5,000 or so myself

Ingmar Greil - 30 June 2010 10:46 AM

John Fuller - 30 June 2010 10:05 AM

Also, did you guys have to obliterate our post counts also?    Apparently you pruned over 4,000 of my old posts.  It might be a nice nod to people who have written a lot of posts to keep those numbers intact.

I am afraid that’s not an option with the Forum module. Those numbers always reflect the status quo and are frequently recalculated. Hey, I lost about 5,000 or so myself

Of course, any of the above mentioned suggestions aren’t possible at the moment.  We are talking feature requests. 

John Fuller - 30 June 2010 10:57 AM

Ingmar Greil - 30 June 2010 10:46 AM

John Fuller - 30 June 2010 10:05 AM

Also, did you guys have to obliterate our post counts also?    Apparently you pruned over 4,000 of my old posts.  It might be a nice nod to people who have written a lot of posts to keep those numbers intact.

I am afraid that’s not an option with the Forum module. Those numbers always reflect the status quo and are frequently recalculated. Hey, I lost about 5,000 or so myself

Of course, any of the above mentioned suggestions aren’t possible at the moment.  We are talking feature requests. 

Not a bad idea John.

Leslie Camacho - 30 June 2010 04:43 PM

John Fuller - 30 June 2010 10:57 AM

Ingmar Greil - 30 June 2010 10:46 AM

John Fuller - 30 June 2010 10:05 AM

Also, did you guys have to obliterate our post counts also?    Apparently you pruned over 4,000 of my old posts.  It might be a nice nod to people who have written a lot of posts to keep those numbers intact.

I am afraid that’s not an option with the Forum module. Those numbers always reflect the status quo and are frequently recalculated. Hey, I lost about 5,000 or so myself

Of course, any of the above mentioned suggestions aren’t possible at the moment.  We are talking feature requests. 

Not a bad idea John.

See this is exactly why i love the Expression Engine community. When users are unhappy it’s dealt with, and you guys show that you really care about what we have to say and the big dogs come out. The same is true for the majority of EE 3rd party developers as well. There is no other community like this, and this is what it’s all about! ROCK ON! :D