topic Re: Is this eBay Community Forum archiving strange? in Community Platform Discussion

Is this eBay Community Forum archiving strange?

eoptimizer — Mon, 19 Dec 2022 00:07:53 GMT

Hi,
I entered the link for a fairly recent (4th May 2021) post to the "Payments" page, and the system returned "The content you are looking for has been archived. View related content below.".

It related to the eBay related company PayPal who have been getting into very hot water of late.

It doesn't seem logical that a 4th May 2021 post would be archived, but I'm not an ebay Community Forum expert and don't know all the goings on here... I would expect the eBay Community Forum to be open and free from discrimination, so the first thing I suppose I need to know is "the eBay Community Rules for archiving", and if a 4th May 2021 post being archived 'sounds odd', I mean I save links of all questions I ask so I can go back and resolve problems I've already solved, but if the eBay Community Forum is hiding the answers in archives I can't access, I think you'll agree that it makes our efforts worthless and the eBay Commuinity Forum semi-worthless.

If you can paste in pertinent text instead of links I'd appreciate it.

Thanks

Re: Is this eBay Community Forum archiving strange?

hill-walker — Mon, 19 Dec 2022 20:34:51 GMT

@eoptimizer wrote:
It related to the eBay related company PayPal...

I'd guess it was archived, as eBay and Paypal are NOT related any more, other than as just another means of payment. Went their separate ways some time back.

Re: Is this eBay Community Forum archiving strange?

katie@ebay — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 08:28:57 GMT

Hi @eoptimizer,

Thank you for your question.

Content on the community is archived up to 6 months ago for our forum style pages. This includes all the discussion boards. This is to make sure the information on here is not outdated, the site can run quicker with less technical issues and there isn't too much content here to read through.

It's important to note that it goes by when the last reply was posted and not when the original post was made. There would need to be no new replies on a post for 6 months for it to be archived by our system.

If you would like to open a new thread on the topic we welcome that.

Thanks,

Katie

Re: Is this eBay Community Forum archiving strange?

eoptimizer — Fri, 06 Jan 2023 17:02:12 GMT

Thanks, well, I hope you now see that this form of archive move trashed everyone's ebay knowledgebase...

...another case of eBay (or eBay related?) acting like a bull in a china shop.

There's absolutely no reason to archive. All that's needed is to index on 6 months (far too short IMO), and keep refreshing the index/content, no link/content archival or deletions, the content and the links still there for the users' knowledgebase, but not affecting the "6 month system"/searches.

I think it's important for the eBay Forum to revisit this, and restore the archived content/The Public's time&effort.

Re: Is this eBay Community Forum archiving strange?

pixiesen2012 — Fri, 06 Jan 2023 17:19:23 GMT

2021 is nearly two years ago and a lot of things on ebay have changed since then, so it makes sense to archive post that old!

Re: Is this eBay Community Forum archiving strange?

katie@ebay — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 08:03:42 GMT

@eoptimizer 6 months is the chosen timeline due to the high volume of content here. The site would have too much content on it to run efficiently if not.

I do also want to stress that we do not archive ongoing conversations. There would have to be no replies or discussion in 6 months for the system to archive.

This is good because if an older topic is still being discussed or is in use it will not be removed.

eBay is a fast-paced environment and information can quickly become outdated. This is another reason for the 6-month window.

Thanks,

Katie

Re: Is this eBay Community Forum archiving strange?

eoptimizer — Sun, 15 Jan 2023 17:45:36 GMT

...but what was written there could be said to be a reflection of eBay's "Can't Do" approach.

I can see solutions to the problem, so there's no archiving, no efficiency issues, and no 'old info' getting in the way of efficiency, and management of old info.

Re: Is this eBay Community Forum archiving strange?

katie@ebay — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 08:54:57 GMT

@eoptimizer is there a particular topic you are looking for information on? We can help where possible.

Archiving will continue 6 months after no activity on a thread. This does help our site load quicker and preform better. It also ensures that if there are issues with a topic new threads are opened and we can assist.

Thanks,

Katie

Re: Is this eBay Community Forum archiving strange?

melissabyjovi — Sun, 07 Jan 2024 20:18:54 GMT

Is this "archiving" or "deletion"? Archiving implies that the data is switched to read-only, not that it vanishes forever.

Re: Is this eBay Community Forum archiving strange?

katie@ebay — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 09:07:22 GMT

Thank you for your question @melissabyjovi.

The data is not deleted, but it is removed from public view and would not be considered read only.

Thanks,

Katie

Re: Is this eBay Community Forum archiving strange?

sagr2519 — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 16:10:20 GMT

Why can't it be made viewable?

Not only that. From searches it seems to be 4 months rather than 6. The topic "Where-you-REALLY-stand-on-shipping-using-Simple-Delivery" is widely linked to and appears to be from less than 6 months ago, but it's archived.

Re: Is this eBay Community Forum archiving strange?

sagr2519 — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 17:14:24 GMT

If people continue posting links to a comment on the forums, that means they are still interested in it even if they aren't replying within the same thread. The topic "Where-you-REALLY-stand-on-shipping-using-Simple-Delivery" has at least 6 recent links within the forums.