FYI to all

I'm going to be going through The Café area of the forums within a few days and begin moving stagnant or hibernating threads to the local archives for this area.

It's been a long time in coming, and some of the "games" threads may be spilt so the older posts can be archived. In some instances we have threads that haven't been touched in 6 years or more. So it is overdue.

Someone needs to do it, and everyone else has been avoiding this like the plague, so it's gonna get done. After it's finished those who get moderation authority over the local areas will be expected to clean it up on a regular basis.

Why? It hasn't been avoided. No one cares. The distinction between a thread that the disappears systemically (visually if not actually) after 30 days and one that's moved to an archive no one reads is irrelevant.

I'm sure your time could be better spent doing, oh I don't know, anything.

The Cafe area has been achieved.

Blackshear, over the years that I have been on the moderation team for these forums, one of the regular complaints has been about not archiving stagnant threads.
For new users, it doesn't present a positive image when there are inactive threads visible on the first page that were last posted in, say, 2005 or 2006.
I've been attacking the problem in stages for the last year or so, but with other responsibilities and commitments in game and in real life, I haven't attacked all of it at one time. If you'll recall I even addressed slimming down and reordering the forums in stages; I did the governmental areas first and with this most recent election, (except for the Court) all the threads were locally archived during the elections. I expect to do the same for the Court shortly since there are currently no incumbents.
One thing to keep in mind is that unlike the older archives, everything is being kept in local subforums in each area, and while the access is broader, they will remain read-only.
I haven't decided what to do about the ton of old subforums that have been archived; they're not in any particular order, and I'm not sure there's much utility in doing anything with those.
The bottom line is, however, that the overall look and feel is much cleaner and not as intimidating as it has been in the past.