The "hoarding" of Private Messages is beginning to cause problems for our forum backups, among other things. There are about 80,000 PMs being saved on our server. That's way too many, and they need to be deleted.

We would like everyone to please go through your PMs and delete any that aren't really necessary. If the number of PMs continues to cause problems for our backups, we may need to take steps to delete them automatically.

We need everyone's cooperation, since a PM is not deleted from the server until the last person on the participants list deletes it.

It would be a good idea, if you're going to reply to a PM, to check to make sure that the person(s) you want it to go to are still listed - they may have deleted it and won't get your message if you reply to that PM.

Thanks to those who have taken the time to delete unnecessary PMs. We appreciate your efforts!

However, there are still over 75,000 PMs in the database, so there is more work to be done.

Just a quick update on PMs: In the week before our forum upgrade, we manually cleaned up some of the largest private messages, but there are still more than 50,000 of them on our server. Starting today, there is a limit of 20 PM threads per member. You will see a "meter" at the top of your message list that lets you know how many message threads you have in your PM box. If you have more than 20, other members will not be able to send you new private messages until you delete enough PMs to get below the limit.

We will probably be taking additional steps, as time permits, to reduce the number of old PMs on our server.

The number of PMs has grown by 3,000 in the last week, so we will probably start manually deleting them. If anyone wants to preserve PMs, they should use the "Email topic" to send a copy to your email before we start deleting them.