Archiving Topics and Deleting Accounts

[Allen Bradford]

Question: My Board is 20 years old. After the last major IPB Update, the last 15 years of my Boards Topics were automatically Archived, which rendered them Locked and Unsearchable. This left just 5 years worth of live Topics that could be found in a Search. I understand the need to streamline in order to save data and space but this automatic Archive was egregious.

If I was to go into my AdminCP and change that 5 years to say 10 years or even 15 years would the Topics within that time frame that are Archived be Unarchived and then Searchable?

If yes, how long would it take? (I only have..gulp..7mbps speed)

Should I take my Board Offline during this process? I ask because unarchiving a single Topic seems to tax the software and takes time. I don’t want to crash my Board.

Should I do the Unarchiving in small 1 or 2 year batches?

Question: I’ve had occasion in the past to delete Memberships for a variety of reasons. Generally I chose to keep the Members Content with the author to appear as “Guest”. Always worked and the Member showed up as Guest on all past Content. I recently deleted a Membership for let’s call him “Jim Jim”. I chose Options shown below. *But instead of “Guest” on all his past Topics and a Posts it shows “Guest Jim Jim” as author. Is this a glitch? Can I somehow remove the Members name?

What should happen to the member's content after the member is deleted?

Delete

Hide

Leave (I chose this)

Attribution

Continue to attribute to Jim Jim

Anonymize attribution (I chose this)
This will show content attributed to Guest and remove any stored IP addresses. Recommended when local privacy laws such as GDPR apply.

 

 

 

[Jim M]

3 minutes ago, Allen Bradford said:

If I was to go into my AdminCP and change that 5 years to say 10 years or even 15 years would the Topics within that time frame that are Archived be Unarchived and then Searchable?

Yes.

 

3 minutes ago, Allen Bradford said:

If yes, how long would it take? (I only have..gulp..7mbps speed)

It is done via a background task in the system and ran on the server. Your computer/connection is not used.

3 minutes ago, Allen Bradford said:

Should I take my Board Offline during this process? I ask because unarchiving a single Topic seems to tax the software and takes time. I don’t want to crash my Board.

No. It uses a background task to prevent this from happening.

4 minutes ago, Allen Bradford said:

Should I do the Unarchiving in small 1 or 2 year batches?

No. This will not impact the timing involved.

5 minutes ago, Allen Bradford said:

Question: I’ve had occasion in the past to delete Memberships for a variety of reasons. Generally I chose to keep the Members Content with the author to appear as “Guest”. Always worked and the Member showed up as Guest on all past Content. I recently deleted a Membership for let’s call him “Jim Jim”. I chose Options shown below. *But instead of “Guest” on all his past Topics and a Posts it shows “Guest Jim Jim” as author. Is this a glitch? Can I somehow remove the Members name?

What should happen to the member's content after the member is deleted?

Delete

Hide

Leave (I chose this)

Attribution

Continue to attribute to Jim Jim

Anonymize attribution (I chose this)
This will show content attributed to Guest and remove any stored IP addresses. Recommended when local privacy laws such as GDPR apply.

Please ensure that you're on the latest release of 4.6.12. Unfortunately, I cannot reproduce this there.

[Allen Bradford]

Thank you for the info. I’ll perform the Updates and then revisit this Topic concerning Deleted Members User Names.

[Allen Bradford]

I updated my Board software, and tested this issue by deleting an inactive Membership. This time all of that Members Topics and Posts were authored as “Guest” as they should be. I’ll assume the issue with a Members User Name being attached to “Guest” upon deletion was some sort of anomaly or glitch I guess.

[Marc]

It is an issue that was resolved in 4.6.12