It's kind of ironic that the size of the archive is what's actually preventing me from really accessing it then.
As for the pruning, is that step even inevitable? Is there a chance that, say, two or three more years of posts and threads will cause even more problems?
I have as many fond memories of this place as most of the old faces but I can't honestly say that I go back to read entire threads from 2008. As long as we could keep the important (mostly) movie-related threads around , I would gladly trade in my memories for a bit of comfort.