On the advice of our Software Administrator, Caith, all topics that have reached 20 pages will be locked and a newer topic on the same subject will be started.
The reason for doing this is solely to free up the server's resources and allow for quicker loading of that topic. We had many topics that are over 20 pages, and a few that were over 100 pages. When viewing those topics, the software is actually loading the entire thread, not just the page in view, and if several people were looking at the same topic, well, that's a lot of memory that's being used needlessly.
I have decided to split the current topic and start a new one, and the older one will be locked, but not deleted. For some of the larger (older) threads, I have split them anywhere from 20, 40, or 50 pages, depending upon the initial page count of that thread. I have already completed this project, and hereafter this splitting/locking of topics will be done automatically, but in 20-page increments.
I have put a link in the last message of each locked thread to the next 'new section' of the thread, and vice versa for the first message, too, even though the sections will be numbered in chronological order. In the event the now-locked topic was a Sticky (aka "THE OFFICIAL ..."), it has been reduced to a normal topic. The purpose behind this was to reduce clutter at the top of the index pages for all the "open" Sticky's.
Should you have any questions or comments, please contact me via PM.
Thank you, and have a great day!!
- Kimerlys