The archives are a great source of fun, but also create a large number of page views. I myself have been known to 'thumb' through them to the rate of 30 or 40 in a row, and some nights many more.

Most commercially successful online strips do not maintain a large library of archives. The people at comics.com for instance only carry a 30 day history for each of their strips.

Many of the Modern Tales artists have either no publicly available history, or only a representative segment of their archives available to draw new readers in.

UF could do a number of things with this. (Sort of pick and choose. Not everything would have to be done to make this work. Any of these things would either cut costs or increase revenues.)

1: Archives available only to subscribers.

2: 30 days most recent strips available as a 'teaser' to draw new readers and posters in.

3: Only an 'introductory' story arc available to the public as a teaser.

4: Only those archives not bound in dead trees available online.

I don't expect any of these alternatives to be well received, but would like to hear any constructive criticism on how to deal with the other aspects of any of these decisions.

For instance, if we take the archives off completely, what happens to the comments associated with those strips?

If the teaser arc is an 'introductory' arc, and thus static, what happens to the comment boards associated with those strips?

Yes, the teaser arc could be duplicated in the archives, complete with boards, but part of what we do here is the community aspect, again, and is part of what draws people to join the community and become supporters.

On a completely different note;

How does everyone feel about the option to delete posts from diaries in order to reduce server space? Would it be effective at all on a 'delete by choice' option, or would we need a 'delete after 180 days' option? Would it in fact, BE effective in any way, or is this a case of more work than it's worth?