Once upon a time, someone created a doll. It was a seemingly innocent doll that was a re-mesh of the teddy bear. But this doll was evil in ways that it makes grown men (mainly me) curl up in a ball in the corner and whimper when they think of it. One second, please....
*whimper, whimper, sob*
Okay, where was I? Ah yes. This was the infamous "girldolldressed." This doll not only wreaked unspeakable havoc in people's games, it attached itself to everything it came into contact with. Houses, objects (even EA recolors)...anything that could be uploaded and downloaded could be affected by it. People would end up with it, upload things to the exchange and other sites, and other people would download this stuff and they'd get it too. As you can imagine, this created a vicious cycle: download, infection, upload, on and on seemingly forever. I do not exaggerate in the slightest when I say that this thing was the "Black Plague" of the Sims community. I got it from downloading tattoos off the exchange. It was the only thing that could have caused it because at the point I got it, tattoos were the only thing I was downloading.
This resulted in a synchronized purge across the internet of literally anything that might have possibly come into contact with it. The Exchange saw the largest of these purges because it was an upload/download system that was almost universally used. This purge was wide and sweeping, and this bane of Simkind was forever banished to the annals of history.
Despite this doll being nothing more than an unpleasant memory, I believe the Exchange still engages in periodic purges of user content. I don't know if this is based strictly on age or if it's dependent on the number of downloads, but I do know this does happen from time to time. While this started after the "Big Purge," I doubt the subsequent purges are directly related to it. It's more than likely done to help conserve server space, and it's possible that the original purge showed them just how effective it could be to that end.
