Babycentre is cleaning up their community.
This is a great idea and more communities should be doing it.
For mature communities, it’s easier to create a better community experience by removing content than creating more content.
It’s also better for attracting more search traffic (removing thin content), making popular content easier to find, and ensuring discussions are kept up to date.
The criteria for removing content is fascinating to read:
“The criteria for deletion depends on several factors, primarily:
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Less visited posts with no new comments in the past 3 years.
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Groups that, after removal of posts with no activity in the past 3 years, have 1 or no posts remaining.
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Private groups with no members.”
Theoretically, you can remove any discussions which attract few visitors and participation. For some, this might mean removing thousands, potentially even millions, of posts over the years.
The problem with doing this is obvious too. It might affect member post-counts, points, rankings, and benefits they’ve earned.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. It just means you need to solve the problem of either ensuring members retain their current rankings or preparing members to lose them.
