05-28-2015, 02:52 PM
Good to see a plan coming together; I agree with with most of what's been said. Discussing it a bit with my wife, it seems like moving over to node.js is going to be a rather large task for you - like building it from scratch. However it should perform better and faster than any/most of the popular art sites (in theory). I definitely think user self-posting is definitely the way to go, however this also should go hand in hand with beefing up staff for moderation and other admin duties. With that in mind it's nice to see you reaching out to old staff.
As for the forums themselves, I think Unknown has a good idea. Accounts with very few to no posts should be scrubbed, any banned account should go with them. I think the Spam forum should go too, forum games and similar should be fine in the General Discussion forum. Outright spam just shouldn't be encouraged - that's just my opinion though. The old posts though? Archive them, put them up to be peruse by anyone who wishes, keeping the community's history alive while promoting the formation of a budding community identity for a new site.
As for the forums themselves, I think Unknown has a good idea. Accounts with very few to no posts should be scrubbed, any banned account should go with them. I think the Spam forum should go too, forum games and similar should be fine in the General Discussion forum. Outright spam just shouldn't be encouraged - that's just my opinion though. The old posts though? Archive them, put them up to be peruse by anyone who wishes, keeping the community's history alive while promoting the formation of a budding community identity for a new site.