[horselover]

Do they all bear relevance, like the ones from 2006?

How about deleting some?

I'm thinking along the lines of resource usage on the server, I know that the more there is, the more resources are used, and the site does lag more often as a result.

[stav]

well locking them will have no effect on server usage... as for deleting them, it's not something that bothers me, but you need to find out if it will effect post count, because some people get quite stressed about that sort of thing (voice of experience)

Things that take up bandwidth are attachments... so if you can get to the bit where the total attachments are listed, (not sure if a moderator can get that far into the board workings) then that is where to start... remove the ones from old threads... (attachments ie. where someone has uploaded from their pc.. not image links to other sites.. for instance my snow pictures are hosted on my website and i am hotlinking, so it won't have an effect on this site)

also worth finding out if the board has an archiving function, which compresses and 'puts away' old threads without actually deleting them...

[horselover]

Well I was advised not to delete threads or posts, but only to do so with the recent spam that has been coming in.

[stav]

there you go then... lol.. obviously spam has to go.. but to be honest locking old threads would be pointless... there are some that are resurrected months later and spark the whole debate again, which is a good thing..

as i said above, one thing that would be of benefit would be to remove any old attachments... but i think it is an admin only function on these types of board... short of reading every single thread and modding it in line...