talad wouldn't ever let me cleanup the forums properly. he was always afraid something would get inadvertently deleted or something going missing i believe. we did keep the wishlist section kinda tidy to a degree. and the server up down threads.
i see where he's coming from. he's very big on remembering and saving the past. it has its ups and downs.
i think it all depends on which forum section you're in. i always thought the technical help areas should also be kept tidy, but that discussion really never went to far. it's nice to have the long archive for the more fun areas like the writing/roleplaying, the genera forums, offtopic areas, etc. never know when you want to necro something from the days of old for funsies.
coming from someone that dealt many years being the help desk guy for the not so computer savy, the tech help areas really should be kept tidy, with an archieve area if you must. the avg person takes one look at the results they get back on a typical search, and says "nope" and moves on. that is even if they sort by most recent and so forth.
human nature and all that jazz. kinda like how no one really ever goes past page 1 of a google search results selection. that is unless you want to find special russian pages to get software in the not so legal means of obtainment.