Listing of number of posts

[cushman eagle]

I noticed in the past week the listing of my number of posts went from 499 to 389 .I just wondered if I am also getting younger without feeling it?

[lockwoodjohn]

Anything is possible!!!!

[Lucasind]

I brought this to webmaster's attention days ago. I lost 70 on my count also.

[Me Again]

I lost 2000 ,give or take.Guess they are just to old to keep anymore.
There is only so much space in the archives

[voyager55]

who cares?

[triton28]

it isn't only old posts, as I posted one the other day with part numbers for someone and it vanished.
Dave

[Lucasind]

who cares?

It wasn't just about counts.....all posts, and PMs, were lost Saturday also.

[chevyman1]

I lost over 100 also

[Highway Rider]

So to answer your questions. This version of the forum has not been updated to a newer version for over three year. As with all update there are usually security patches. Along with other bug fixes. In an effort to prep for the updates it was advised to clean up what are called orphaned posts and duplicate posts and all post that are slated to be auto pruned. This is to make it a cleaner update. So after I saw that this had not been done for several years, which is just part of normal maintenance to make the site run smoother and when someone searches for a topic they get a more accurate and easier way to find what they are looking for.

[cushman eagle]

So to answer your questions. This version of the forum has not been updated to a newer version for over three year. As with all update there are usually security patches. Along with other bug fixes. In an effort to prep for the updates it was advised to clean up what are called orphaned posts and duplicate posts and all post that are slated to be auto pruned. This is to make it a cleaner update. So after I saw that this had not been done for several years, which is just part of normal maintenance to make the site run smoother and when someone searches for a topic they get a more accurate and easier way to find what they are looking for.

I can accept that explanation.

[Highway Rider]

I have done a lot of research on just what happens when the prune post is initiated. There are couple prerequisite that have to be met. First there are a number of day between when pruning of posts are ran. Lets give it a number of 15, that means it is ran every 15 days. Now in those 15 days it will grab and will set to delete any post that have met the next two requirements.

The next requirement is a number of days after a post has been made on the topic not the originating post but the last post. But if someone creates a topic and no one posts on it then it is the last post and days start counting. So lets give this a number of 7. So that means that after 7 days that topic can be set to be removed because it would be considered a dead topic. But that will all depend on the third part.

The next requirement is if it has been viewed. If no one has viewed the topic in a number of days the it will be set to be pruned So lets give it a number of 20 days. So that means that after no one has viewed the topic in 20 days it will be marked to be removed. But that will not happen till after the second run on the every 15 day cycle. So that should let the post run for 30 days if no viewed it. But if some one opened it on Day 29 the cycle starts from the beginning.

Now here is the strange part once the topic is set to be pruned it can't be reversed. The way that it will be totally removed is by an action of a user or the Admin. Should a user go and view the topic and it is set to be pruned that user just removed it by viewing it. The next one is done by the Admin and that is to initiate a prune all posts. So when the Admin does this it is like going in and viewing all post. But it is done with one click. Now remember these are set to be removed and they can not be saved.

Now this is where the user post counts come in to play. If you posted on the topics that were removed then yes your post count will go down and those of you that post a lot will see more of a change in you post count. Is this Fair in my opinion no. It's because of people like you that help keep the forum going. If one was to prune daily the notice of change would not have been so noticeable. But when you do several years at one time the numbers do add up. I am sorry for that.

Now that you have read this far and I hope that you have a better understanding of just what happens when a topic /post gets pruned.

There is some good news. Maybe I could have said it all with this paragraph. I have made a change in the programming to hopefully prevent your post counts from going down when a post /topic is pruned. We'll just have to wait and see.
Pruning of topics/posts will still be done but there are only 3 forums that this is run on and they are all General topics The 1700 general topic is set not to prune. Not enough base for prune to run.

So there you have it --took me a lot of internet searching to find this information.
Oh and by the way, we run are numbers vary high on the days, some are up as high as a year which should be enough time to save a post.

[Highway Rider]

Just a couple of thinks that I did not mention in the previous post.
But should the Admin run a sync all users post counts your number will adjusted to reflect the actual post count of the users that still remain. It's a catch 22 situation. Just remember that when a post is pruned (removed) the reason that it was removed is because it has not been viewed in over a year.
Due to the high number view days it should be at least a year or more before any posts are pruned and any users post counts are affected.