I can understand needing to remove the Terabytes of raw video from your highspeed storage servers to make room for your next video project. I'm sure the information is retained somewhere (backup tapes?) if the customer comes back, and wants an edit.
For me, removing you old posts is akin to removing all but the last maintenance log entry from the Beaver.
No, we don't back up the media when we blow a job away unless there is a high liklihood of needing to do revisions later which is very, very rare. The original camera tapes are retained, of course, and the stuff we shoot today on our new card cameras-- a least the "keeper" footage--- is copied off to digital tape for long term storage. But other than a master tape copy we almost never back up our edit files when we are done with the job.
And I don't agree that removing all but say the last month of so of my posts is going to make a lick of difference to value of this forum. I'm talking about
my posts, not anybody else's. Posts that give specific data about stuff, be it a boat or an engine or a radio or whatever, might have some value to someone looking for information about that subject.
But 99.99999999 percent of my posts are just conversational. No data, no specs, nothing concrete that anyone would be searching for in the future. It's timely and (I hope) relevant to the immediate conversation, but like a conversation on a dock, it's relevant only at the time of the conversation.
Plus in my case it's almost all just opinion, and opinion based on a very narrow experience in boating. I know our Arima and our Grand Banks pretty well now. But I'm not like Rick B whose career is built on dealing with all manner of vessels and vessel systems all over the world. Or Carl (Delfin) who I gather has been boating in all manner of boats in all manner of situations for a long time. Or Bob Lowe over on the GB owners forum who's a former shipwright and for years owned and managed a boatyard that specialized in doing virtually anything and everything having to do with Grand Banks (and other) boats, wood and glass.
So as far as I'm concerned, with the possible and perhaps doubtful exception of my most recent material, the value of the server space occupied by my past posts far exceeds the value of the ones and zeros currently occupying it.
If I could figure out a way to delete them myself I'd do it. (I've got someone working on that for me
) But what I'd love to see is either the ability to set a "life" of one's posts in their UserCP section or a non-expiring "edit" function so that members could go back in time if they wished to and delete at least the text and photo content.
The Coot's builder told me today the pilothouse roof is made of cored fiberglass. And here I thought the boat's exterior was all steel.
- Art 
