Solutions might be:
1. Regular pruning, as suggested several times above;
2. Recognising the poet's right to the thread. If a poet asks for a thread to be deleted, would anyone seriously argue the point? The comments have been given, the revisions have been done. It should be the poet's right to have the thread remain or not. If respondents were worried about preserving their crits for posterity... well, the thread is gonna be pruned anyway, so why worry?
3. Failing (2), the poet could delete the poem and all of his/her replies, then PM all respondents and ask them if they'd mind deleting their crits. Not the best option.
Last year, I posted a poem on the Round-Up which was deemed to be unsuccessful in workshopping. Then, to my utter surprise, it was picked up by a journal. I simply PM'd Quincy and asked him to remove the entire thread, and explained why, and he did it immediately. No problem, and nobody got shitty that their crits had vanished. Sure, it's not something that you'd do lightly or on a whim, but it should be an available option to the poet.
Just my late view on this.
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