Feedback Please: Dumping the Old Gear Swap Forum

Dump it.  If the site was locked, it added little value anyway.  Am I wrong?

Agree . Dump it.

Surprised its been left up for so long

Dump it.

It’s annoying to search for a piece of gear and 90% of the hits are from the old GS.

Dump.

ditch it – agree with Chris K – more annoying than anything

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift, that’s why we call it the present……..”

Dump it, BUT, there is value in having access to historical data, so perhaps it would be possible to archive it somewhere? I have no idea how this would impact BPL, but it’s something to keep in mind.

Dump it – but PLEASE make the new swap more functionable. It’s pretty bad…

Should have ditched it yesterday!

I’m with dumping.  i only remember looking up an old listing once in more than 10 years for something that I had bought just to get some construction details. On a related note, I’ve found my browsing of the new gear swap to have dropped considerably after the change. It just doesn’t seem as convenient to quickly peruse for some reason.

Dump it. Then again, I’ve been a proponent of dumping pretty much most of the old posts in all forums, not just gear swap, though I know that’s not a popular opinion among the old folk here.

Thanks for the responses. We will be purging the old forum over the weekend.

@paulw – I hear you regarding the potential value of some old posts – Chris gives a use case above where he wanted to see a detail of something that had been posted on the old GS. This is a case of a cost/benefit analysis and we think the benefit of speeding up the site is worth the cost of very occasional access to an old post.

I agree with cost/benefit calculation. Once per decade for me, probably less for other people, not a compelling case. I look forward to a quicker site. Given the time limited value of old GS posts are you going to apply that to the new GS? Would that be of benefit? After say 12-18 months?

I’ve never had a need or desire to search out old Gear Swap threads on BPL.  I occasionally check “sold items” on eBay to get a sense of a “market price” but 1) that’s out 4.3 gazillion sales so it has more relevance and 2) it doesn’t affect the speed of searching.

That’s a good point about purging the new GS after a time period. 12 or 18 months feels like a good increment.

Before purging other BPL sections, consider opening them up to the Internet Archive to preserve for posterity, future researchers, and the occasional decade diver:

https://web.archive.org

Because it’s not allowed now:

— Rex