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Richard Millington asked about what you do with outdated content on Linkedin. My reply has received some positive feedback and I thought I’d share here. 

Create an Archive category

  1. Create community category
  2. Adjust permissions to be only visible to admins

Only Delete Posts You’ll Never Need Again


There are plenty of use cases for when Deleting/Trashing a post is the best move (spam, violation of guidelines, etc.). But IMO outdated content is not one of them. 

It’s just as easy to move the topic, as it is to Trash it. 

Benefits

  • The URL still works if people reach out. What if users had it bookmarked? What if that post is linked in another post? Etc. Etc. 
    • If you trash the post, you won’t be able to find it (at least not easily)
    • If you archive the post, the link will still work for Admins, and the topic will still come up if you search the title in content moderation views or front end search (if you have the permission to see the archive). 
    • If needed, it can be updated and moved back to a category users can access. It’ll be harder to do this if you have to find it in the Trash can. Plus you risk permanent loss if the trash gets emptied. 
       
  • User metrics stay the same. The number of Topics and answers is unchanged if the topic moves to another category. But it will change if you trash the topic. 
    • This is from my testing of looking at my profile logged-in with full permission vs logged-out / incognito. The metrics are the same, even though many of my topics and answers are the archive category. 
    • Avoid disruption to gamification based on user metrics. You may need to archive an old answer, but the user won’t be impacted. 
       
  • Legacy reporting and community stats. What if that post was popular? How do you know it won’t be relevant again in the future? 
    • If you’re pulling reports on the full history of your community content, whether from Gainsight or Google Analytics, the posts are still included, along with insight on views, likes, etc. 
    • If you’re looking for inspiration on updating documentation, building FAQ lists, or curating resources on a topic, that post may be relevant. 

Related

 

Awesome stuff ​@DannyPancratz !  Agree with you completely, thank you for sharing this best practice!

One small thing I’ll add is that you optionally can also choose to keep the archive category publicly visible while removing its contents from search and search engine indexing (native CC features).  That way, any member with their direct link can still find their old content.  This is a very ‘safe’ way to archive content while knowing with certainty that nobody will hit a dead-end, just in case it still shows up in a Google search or someone finds a direct link. That’s how we’ve set up our archive category: https://communities.gainsight.com/archived-content-217 

 

Thanks for adding that, ​@Kenneth R. I didn’t realize that was possible. 

Hi Danny,

Thank you for sharing your insights on archiving (user-generated) content within communities. I fully agree with your approach of not discarding content too hastily. I also resonate with Kenneth's point—it is well illustrated by the OVO Community’s "The Library," which enhances transparency by allowing users to revisit their past contributions.

Still, there are compelling reasons to consider hiding and eventually deleting outdated content, in my opinion based on several community-specific criteria:

  • Age: Whether your community is well-established (over a decade) or still in its early stages.
  • Size: The number of users and the volume of content in total.
  • Industry: The contrast between rapidly evolving sectors like technology versus slower-paced fields such as NGOs.
  • Level of Daily Activity: Metrics such as unique visitors, new members, and the frequency of posts.

As a retired community manager, my final project before joining Gainsight (formerly inSided) centered on a massive archiving and cleaning up outdated content. This initiative stemmed from a marked decline in our self-service score, notably impacting call deflection rates as identified by the exit survey. Users were struggling to find the information they needed, which was key to our business success. Surprisingly, this issue persisted even though our community team had a workflow for quarterly content reviews, where we updated our list of the top 500-1,000 highest-ranked topics. This needed a deeper investigation.

Our analysis revealed several issues caused by the abundance of old content:

  • Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): Confusion and dissatisfaction among users.
  • Self-Service Score: A steep decline due to users struggling to find relevant information.
  • New Content Indexing Time: Fresh content faced delays in being indexed, as older content consumed our search engine crawl budget. You can learn more about crawl budgets here.

Conclusion: After a thorough process of archiving and deleting hundreds of thousands of outdated posts and topics, we observed a 7 percentage point increase in self-service (call deflection) within three months, based on user responses to, "Did you find the information you were looking for?"

Balancing the preservation of valuable historical content with the need to maintain a relevant and user-friendly community is essential. This requires ongoing evaluation of content effectiveness and relevance, but do not hesitate to take decisive actions when necessary.

I’d be interested in hearing more community experts thoughts on these strategies.

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