To archive or to delete?

[Hayley]

Hi everyone, I've seen a few discussions on here about archiving, but can't find anything about deleting old content. Is there any reason why I should not delete old posts that no longer receive engagement and that are no longer relevant to the community - such as TKBs explaining how to use an app that was discontinued a year ago.

My main concern was that it might affect rank or badges, but I've done a manual test and it seems members who have earned a certain rank or badge keep those, even if all their posts are deleted.

Thanks!

[VarunGrazitti]

@Hayley - I think this is a very sensitive point which you have raised, should you archive or delete the old content. I have been involved in a lot of such tasks in my experience with the communities,  mostly on Lithium and a few on Jive. In that, I have never ever deleted a single thread. The reason is simple, once you archive a thread, you have an option to:

a. make a thread read only but public

b. make a thread private/ doesn't show up in search

So, if you have such flexibility, why would you want to delete the content? You can still achieve what you would with deleting it. Also, it might not impact the user ranks/ badges but will impact their stats. Some of the customizations etc. which depend on these numbers might get affected.

Here is another topic on the same question. 

I hope this helps.

[DanK]

We never delete anything, we have an archive location for old content. This preserves user stats and in the event of a mistaken archive it can be retrieved... delete is a little harder to reverse 😛

Our company policy requires that we keep all content for several years also, which means even if the above were not considerations we would still not be deleting.

[prernabhatia1]

could u please tell me the how to archive the message not to delete and where is the archive location. 

[MohammedSh]

Hello @prernabhatia1

Please refer to this article About the Content Archive which has all the information.