Feedback Please: Dumping the Old Gear Swap Forum

[Matthew / BPL]

Hey everyone.

BPL is thinking about deleting the content in the old Gear Swap Forum. This would increase the speed of the whole site because GS represents a large chunk of our database. The old GS Forum has been locked since we debuted the new Member Gear Swap so it’s not going to change anything about how people list items for sale. The question here is: Should we keep the archive of the old Gear Swap Forum around? If yes, why do you want it around still?

Our current plans for development include upgrading the new Member Gear Swap in Q3 of this year in order to increase its functionality. We have lots of suggestions about how to do that logged in our system already. I will start another thread soliciting feedback on which features our members are most interested in as we get closer to the Q3 development cycle. Let’s not do that in this thread right now, please.

[Jon Fong / Flat Cat Gear]

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

[Scott Smith]

Agree . Dump it.

Surprised its been left up for so long

[Chris K]

Dump it.

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

[JCH]

Dump.

[David Hartley]

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

[Ken Larson]

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

[PaulW]

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.

[bradmacmt]

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

[dirtbag]

Should have ditched it yesterday!

[Chris FormyDuval]

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.

[BlackHatGuy]

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.

[Matthew / BPL]

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.

[Chris FormyDuval]

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?

[David Thomas]

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.

[Matthew / BPL]

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

 

[Rex Sanders]

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

[Author]

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