I am still not sure if this 'bandwidth' issue is really a technical one for our forum and not just something to say - that sounds impressive and enables more persoanl judgements to be made on matters of taste.
And if it were a real technical issue - I can't help thinking that if it cannot be increased to deal with the demand - taking it to its logical conclusion - the answer must be to close everthing and for for everyone to stop posting everything. That will sort it.
Why do we automatically close old BS messages? Well, Roger - we've had a frequent problem with a very few people who seem to think it's cute to refresh large quantities of old BS threads, simply to flood the Forum with old threads. Many of these refreshes are irrational messages or Spam coming from people who have never posted before. I've deleted hundreds that seem to be posted automatically. So, we close all old BS threads after a time, and let people ask us to reopen them. We also close music threads if they end in directing the originator to another thread or to the DT. There are very few reopen requests, so it seems the demand for refreshing old threads is limited. And our Spam visitors have to work a bit to find threads to post to. Next question? -Joe Offer-
Rather like the 'war on terror' where anything or anyone can be a target for terrorism anywhere- measures to combat this risk – tend to daily affect the lives of the many non-terrorists far more than they ever seem to affect the daily lives of a few terrorists.
Despite current practice - plenty of older threads are still available for anyone so inclined to refresh them and be judged by you to think themselves 'cute' - for this supposed 'flooding' of our forum.
Joe - is the practice of automatically closing threads now – really a proportionate response to the problem you perceive?
Is it really such a problem for our forum - from time to time - to show perfectly legitimate (if older) threads? After all - That is its purpose and if the refreshed threads are redundant – this will be proved and judged by our forum - if or when they naturally fall off the bottom.
For as a result of these automatic thread closures - legitimate posters now have to ask your permission to post to a closed older thread or risk displeasure by starting a fresh thread on the same subject – is this not giving a mixed message? And creating more immediate and unnecessary problems for legitimate posters?
There may well be a few vandals – but perhaps measure to deal with them should be proportionate – if these measures are not to have more impact on legitimate posters?
When I used to drive regularly in London's traffic - you could always tell the days when a policeman was manually controlling the traffic flow at certain hot spots. For unlike the days when they were not attempting to control the traffic - the traffic usually stopped flowing at all.