A lot communities have “Posts older than 365 days will be removed.” in their description, but what does this mean exactly? It never says.
- The database of posts only goes as far as 1 year, everything older gets wiped? I hope and assume that’s not it.
- Posts with links to articles older than a year get removed?
- If a thread is over a year old, no new comments will be added?


IMO that’s not for admins or mods to decide. That’s for users and (eventually) historians et al. to decide, and it’s only knowable in retrospect, if ever.
Hell, most of archaeology is digging through literal trash.
Nope, the one who pays the bills decides. If you disagree that’s fine. You are free to host your own instance, where the users can decide how much space they want to take up for saving old pictures.
They can decide if they want to pay for it, but they can’t decide whether other people think it has value or not.
Ah gotcha, now I understand what you mean exactly and I agree.