User blog comment:DaNASCAT/Introducing New Moderator Opportunities For Community Administration/@comment-1738746-20160116043732/@comment-1738746-20160119083051

@DEmersonJMFM: How much experience do you have moderating real forums, as opposed to wiki-based ones? Instead of simply opposing the comments made, did you stop to question and research why this might be such a common and adopted practice on real forums? It's about keeping forums clean and promoting activity and active discussions. Leaving old or dead threads open and around actually discourages conversation and drives members away from your forum. Why would you hang around talking to no one on a dead forum after all? Even if you're still around, that's not the impression people get seeing dead threads. Cleaning dead threads not only demonstrates to the newcomers that there is an active community about, but shows that there's an active administration team looking after the place should they need to seek help for something. While the dynamics might be slightly different on wikis (that said, dynamics vary greatly already between small and large forums too), "cleaning" of forums should still be carried out to demonstrate an active front to newcomers and existing members.

@Technobliterator: I was thinking it but you said it- that's what I was afraid of :/ In my opinion, the discussions feature is useless and extremely disorganised for my taste, particularly after seeing it implemented on the Elder Scrolls wiki where it blew up into a bunch of people posting a bunch of nonsense and the rest of us trying to sift through this to conversations that actually interest us. Again, my opinion, but there is a reason why forums have boards and categories- the discussions page is total chaos. Honestly, I hope the discussions feature does not take over as the new "forum" system, because they are absolutely nothing alike.