And that cached version has far LOWER search engine ranking than a live version of the topic. One cached thread leading to a defunct link has minimal impact on the overall site search results, and whatever effects it does have fades with each crawl & cache trip as the killed thread is no longer indexed.

If you want to talk search engines and more importantly Google, I'd be happy to share with you, offline, what I've done in 2007 for AT&T, HBO, Discover Card, Sesame Street, Nickelodeon and a few other companies you might not be familiar with in regard to interative communications strategies, including, but not limited to, Search Engine Marketing and Optimization.

There are plenty of explanations of what this site is and isn't about, they are found n the sticky posts at the top of each forum. Read them.

Finally, yes, I am a volunteer here, we all are, and I've been quite well charged with a mission to keep this forum on the straight and narrow, and, for ETS at least, any topic that drifts into "the total collapse of society" - as in beyond an ice storm or earthquake or major fire - has an exceedingly short lifespan. There are three perennial topics that will instantly get my attention because they drift quickly.

1. Gun topics. I'm a life NRA member, don't tell me I'm an anti-gunner, but I delete posts that look like they are going to end up somewhere along the lines of Black Helicopters and Ruby Ridge.
Here's Marty's quick guide to gun topics on this board:

a) Will you eat what you shoot? If Yes - carry on,
b) Is what you shoot going to try to eat you? If yes, carry on.
c) Are you trying to learn more about what types of guns are best to use to defend your fortified compound from a starving urban mob that wants to sleep on your couch and drink all your beer? BZZT! Sorry, please try again.

2. Gold & Silver. I like gold, I wish I had lots of it. However, when you start talking about Gold as a means to buy the guns to shoot down the black helicopters and buy food when all the banks have gone under.....BZZT! Thanks for playing, please try again.

3. The Middle East. The 5,000 year old war in the Mideast, its participants, causes and effects are better discussed somewhere - anywhere - but this forum.

Stop, think and post. That is all we ask.