Should there not be some way for normal users who are not forum admins to access the archives somehow? Or would that be part of the “special handling”.
Perhaps if we made sure that the archive file was sanitized of secret information, then they could be put up for download. Even if we don’t want it to be searchable.
If the posts get actually removed from the database, we could eventually get a screen like this:
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[ View Archived Topic ] Download archive of Alpha (2013-2014) (0.5GB)