Imports from old forum. Open or closed threads?

[jola]

I need some advice. Should messages imported from a large and old forum be imported as open or closed threads?

To give you some background I have been running another forum software (webbbs) for more than 10 years. In my old forum old messages were manually moved to archives for every year. Once a message was archived it was not possible to reply to it anymore. I am now importing all the messages from my old forum, both old archived threads from previous years and the active messages into the same new vBulletin forum. I am hesitant if I should import all the messages into open threads or if I should try to set some date after which the threads should be closed.

What would you recommend?

[Jerry]

I can't see anything technical for or against, more of a question of how do you want to manage your site and it's content.

You can always close the Forum after the import to stop any more posts, or just leave it open, and see if you get much thread necromancy.

[jola]

Thanks for your reply. If you have any suggestions on how to handle this open/close issue and if one should archive very old message I'd appreciate any advice. Behind my question about imported messages lies also a question if old threads on my new vBulletin forum should be closed after some time, like it was in my old forum, or if all threads should be kept alive forever. In my old forum software it was necessary to archive messages after some time otherwise the forum software became very slow. In vBulletin this is not a problem though. It is no problem to have all posts active in vBulletin, even posts that date back more than 10 years. How do most people run old forums with vBulletin. Is archiving and closing old threads recommended or something you would advice against?

[Jerry]

Thanks for your reply. If you have any suggestions on how to handle this open/close issue and if one should archive very old message I'd appreciate any advice.

If you want to do it or not is up to you, actually doing it in vBulletin is one Forum option setting, to close it.

In my experince the vast majority of imports leave the data open and let the users of a board, add to what they want and ignore threads in the same manner.

Behind my question about imported messages lies also a question if old threads on my new vBulletin forum should be closed after some time, like it was in my old forum, or if all threads should be kept alive forever. In my old forum software it was necessary to archive messages after some time otherwise the forum software became very slow.

Yes, that is the case with boards with any system as it approaches it's functional capacity. Which with vBulletin is relative to the power of your server, PHP & MySQL config, what type of search is used etc.

Depends on the size of your site, how many millions of posts it is etc.

In vBulletin this is not a problem though. It is no problem to have all posts active in vBulletin, even posts that date back more than 10 years. How do most people run old forums with vBulletin. Is archiving and closing old threads recommended or something you would advice against?

There is no advice for or against it really, it's has more to do with how you want to manage the import and data.

Most people just leave the board as it was so the users have the same experince.