In view of the fact that reviewers come and go, and interests in various topics change periodically, these should stay put. This keeps a variety of topics to choose from on RIA, and we never run out of things to rate. :-)

I don't think a person should delete the old items because a lot of people that have never been to the site can find new and different things to rate. I think it should be left alone.

I know that many folks believe in the ignorant doctrine that if it isn't current, its irrelevant. 

Do we have to institutionalize it here?

Ok, let's not forget one of the most important purposes of a rating site - to get feedbacks of a product of interest. For example, I stumbled across this site because of the reviews on dog food brands, and many who are looking to change their dog food would search and may end up reading reviews from here. An item lacking recent reviews does not mean it's also lacking readers of the reviews. For example, the reviews written for the original Nintendo system is probably not going to increase drastically in quantity and may even stop one day when all of us old dogs die off. However, it's not a bad thing to leave for the later generations to read about how the system was like and how much we used to enjoy it.

I think that items that have not been rated for awhile should stay on the site. It still could be of value to someone even if they do not rate it themselves, they may be still reading it.   I have seen old topics pop up again the newer readers could have that chance to read them or rate.

Nah. You never know when a lost item might be found again...

Like what? Chariots?

Deleting items (or comments) that haven't been rated in a long time seems to be somewhat counter productive. RateItAll should have the goal of being as inclusive as possible (within reason), and deleting older items is counter to that goal. Moreover, the more items listed, the better chance that a list may get hit by an Internet search engine (eg Google) which in turn brings more people to the site. Finally, if one is worried about his or her comments getting dated, just scan the old comments from the user page and update if necessary.

no dont do it someone new is bound to rate an old item sooner or later.

Do not dilute! New people might find old items very exciting or stimulating.

The ideas are getting dumber as I scroll down this list. . .

I don't like this idea. As someone here said, if an item isn't listed, someone's going to suggest that it get added again anyway. Also, for "addicted": you said "so if i hated frasier (for example) 2 years ago and have since been turned on to it, i don't want my old rating or comment to affect the current ratings. it only makes sense to delete after a certain amount of time". If you wrote a negative review for something and then change you mind a year later and want to write a new comment, you can simply change your rating and your comment and once you press "submit", your new rating shows up and takes the place of your old one. Both aren't going to be there at the same time.

I don't think that RIA should take the comments out that aren't voted on often. I agree with CastleBee...it would be better if RIA would take out the unimportant one-liners, like "He's great"..."PUH-Leeze"(do you know how many times I've seen that one?) or "It's stupid". They just take up space and they show how immature or uninformed these people are. Only opinions that can contribute different viewpoints should be on here. The others should be taken off, due to there lack of information and actual argument about a certain idea or topic.

I don't know about this one. It might be good from a space saving perspective. Still, just because a topic hasn't been rated in a long time, doesn't mean that the information isn't going to be valuable to someone who may be in search of an honest opinion about it. What might be a better way to clean up the site would be to go through and delete pointless, not quite bright one-liners like, "That sucks", "I love him", "she's hot", or whatever. While I'm not advocating censorship, unless a post has more substance than this there really isn't a good reason to let it waste space here.

There's a lot on here. Give the entries time to be found and rated.

I really don't see the point in this. What if something is deleted and someone wants to rate it? You'll just have to bring it back again. Better to just keep everything and build.

i think that old ones should be deleted after about a year, so that they won't throw current ratings off. opinions are ever changing, so if i hated frasier (for example) 2 years ago and have since been turned on to it, i don't want my old rating or comment to affect the current ratings. it only makes sense to delete after a certain amount of time. now if we're trying to record trends over the years, then perhaps the old stuff should be poured in to an archives section. just an idea!

I don't think that this is necessary. The point of Rate-It-All is the ability to rate as many items as possible. It does not really matter anyways whether people choose not to rate certain items which are obscure. Some items have tons of comments and ratings, usually those are the topics under entertainment or hot-button political issues; others don't have as many. Of course there are going to be items that are not rated very much, but variety is what makes this site different from other message board sites like epionions.com.

This would be a good idea considering the amount of items available to rate that haven't, for some reason, recieved any ratings at all. My problem mostly lays in the ratings lists for e.g. music video's and books - as there are litteraly more of those items that aren't eligable for the main list than there are items on the actual list. And if an item that you'd wanted to rate has been deleted it's just to write in an suggest it again. But as it is now they just sit there for no reason, what's the point of them being there if no one seemingly plans to rate them?