On the contrary, we ARE thinking of the members.

Maybe I missed a whole load of posts then ? but all the ones I've read from members (except the first post of this thread) seem to be against deleting them.

Me too.

No we cannot. I had many mods go crazy on me in the 3.0 days and the author would vanish. I'd post for help in the PHP/MySQL forum or General Modification dicussion forum and would get told to go to the hack thread. No member has said "Yes! Delete those threads!"

I respect what you've said here, peterska2. While I read the entire post and agreed with many points, this one stands out though and bears addressing:

Just because I disagree with someone wouldn't be a reason to ignore them; quite the contrary, actually.

Hearing differing viewpoints, talking about them and hashing out a compromise that makes the most people happy, is how a community betters itself and makes progress. I accept the reality that the world doesn't revolve around me (in fact, I may even be wrong) and that the concerns of many need to be taken into consideration. So the airing and reception of all viewpoints is appreciated.

I rarely (if ever) use the ignore list, and if I did it would be because that user is just a troll, or a child looking for attention. Not merely because I "cannot agree" with them.



That said... the fact that I, as a member of this site, who has benefited from some of the major hacks available here, can no longer refer to hundreds of bookmarks with helpful information about those hacks, simply because the hack author decided to take the files down, is a silly, hurtful vb.org policy. There is valuable information in there that users could refer to and learn from. Troubleshoot our own problems. Expand our knowledge set. Isn't that the whole point?

Personally, I read every post in a thread before asking a question. I do my best to help myself. What this move does is show me I am wasting my time. I should just be a lemming, and post without any concern for what's been covered before, as it might be deleted at any time.

Many of JumpD's hacks weren't tiny template edits. ArticleBot, and the Live Feedback System were pretty intense with tons of nuances to understand. They are now integral ingredients to my forum's overall style, and I have no reference points to go back to.

I'd understand locking or archiving the threads. Deleting them wholesale? Absurd. This single "policy" makes me question where the priorities of this forum and its moderators lie.