This tangent is in relation to my shuttering one forum.
That forum was around a music band in the UK, and the audience of the forum turned out to be lower than expected - University age. They were emotionally immature, over-shared online, slept with each other, had relationships and break-ups... all in public. The music forum did have lots of music info on it, but it was intertwined with a lot of very highly personal information posted at a time when a reasonable expectation of the internet was ephemerality.
It was totally right to protect the individuals future selves from their past selves, and I would delete again.
There are certainly downsides to hording data. At the very least, information takes up space. It also tends to suck up mental bandwidth: you have to keep organizing, de-duplicating, and migrating to newer formats. It's much easier to just delete it. Just like it's much easier to throw old ratty tshirts. IMO, data hoarding is just as much of a mental disorder as hoarding physical stuff.
This idea that all information must be preserved for forever is also at odds with privacy. See, e.g., the right to be forgotten.
That forum was around a music band in the UK, and the audience of the forum turned out to be lower than expected - University age. They were emotionally immature, over-shared online, slept with each other, had relationships and break-ups... all in public. The music forum did have lots of music info on it, but it was intertwined with a lot of very highly personal information posted at a time when a reasonable expectation of the internet was ephemerality.
It was totally right to protect the individuals future selves from their past selves, and I would delete again.