15 replies to this topic

[Yuli Ban]

A few things:

 

The forums are being deleted soon. I don't know when— ask Will— but they're going to be gone forever. This isn't like the old forum, which you can still find but can't post to anymore. Once it's gone, it's gone.

 

For the most part.

 

If you have the time, you can go about saving the various subforums and threads to the Wayback Machine.

 

 

You can go to their webpage and hit "Save Page Now", but it takes a little while for the page to get saved.

 

Web Archive.com

 

You can also download a browser extension. Then you just have to go to that page, click on the extension and hit 'Save Page', and a new tab will come up. You can then immediately close that tab because Wayback Machine still saves the page (don't worry, I've checked!) and move on.

 

Chrome

 

Firefox

 

 

Once the new forums are up, you can get to work rebuilding everything there.

 

 

 

 

A few more things:

 

1. Make sure to also archive the subforum pages. Don't just archive the threads and leave future visitors with no way to view them!
2. It's best to slow down on posting new things to the forum unless you archive it immediately after doing so. Otherwise whatever you posted will be lost forever and your time wasted.
3. It is wholly possible to archive the entire forum, but there are still thousands of threads and most of them are useless. Because of this, it's best to focus on getting the biggest/most important/most memorable first and then picking up the rest because this can get very tedious for threads that have dozens, even hundreds of pages.
4. I'd recommend going from oldest to newest.

 

 

This should also be the place where we post how far along we've gotten in archiving the forum, so post your progress. This can also help to make sure we don't wind up archiving the same pages a few hours or minutes from each other without realizing it's already been done.

 

I've saved the entire Nanotechnology & Material Science news thread to the Wayback Machine as a test run to see if it works (barring the 36th page). I'm currently in the middle of archiving the Ukraine Conflict thread (up to page 52).

 

Edit: And the Ukraine Conflict thread is completely saved. 

 

For those wondering why that was the first one I chose, well I mean I've said it many times before...

[Maximus]

When we repost the old threads on the new forum, will the time/date on the posts still be the same? Or will everything be dated from the day it's posted?

[Yuli Ban]

Oh no, no, heavens no, you can't repost old threads onto the new forum. You can recreate them, but again, this is just for archival record keeping. Everything's going to be reset.

 

In other news, I've saved: 

TED Talks

The Nostalgia Thread

World War I

Russian Revolution

Post Beautiful CGI

Trade War & Recession

 

 

And just to repeat, that's as of this posting. If you post anything after this very minute, it won't be saved unless you hit 'Save Page Now' yourself.

[Outlook]

As in my status post:

If you guys want to archive the forum, use https://www.httrack.com it essentially just rips whole websites offline.

It does it automatically. As in, you dont need to separately get every thread. It'll get all child directories.

[As We Rise]

I've made too many cringy posts throughout my two and a half years here that I'll just be saving individual posts from either myself or anyone else.

[Yuli Ban]

As in my status post:

If you guys want to archive the forum, use https://www.httrack.com it essentially just rips whole websites offline.

It does it automatically. As in, you dont need to separately get every thread. It'll get all child directories.

I COULD KISS YOU.

[Erowind]

As in my status post:

If you guys want to archive the forum, use https://www.httrack.com it essentially just rips whole websites offline.

It does it automatically. As in, you dont need to separately get every thread. It'll get all child directories.

 

Got it working, I'll find a way to upload the backup for all once it's done. We're currently 60mb in and there's no telling how big this file will be.

[Erowind]

I'm also probably going to pay to fix the link problems after I make sure the httrack mirror works as intended. There's a script here for 15$ that does that.

 

http://dynamictostatic.ornicus.com/

 

 

Also the hardrive i'm backing the forum up to has 1.4TB free so here's hoping that's enough

[Erowind]

Update: The backup has been running at a smooth 29Kbs for about 8 hours now. So far 2GB of data have been saved with a 5.33% error rate per 5,849 files saved. Here's hoping that's not too many errors to break the mirror, as I wouldn't even know where to start on fixing that.

[wjfox]

Wow, thanks everyone. I really appreciate this.

[PS1]

Delete this post, nevermind.

[Outlook]

Update: The backup has been running at a smooth 29Kbs for about 8 hours now. So far 2GB of data have been saved with a 5.33% error rate per 5,849 files saved. Here's hoping that's not too many errors to break the mirror, as I wouldn't even know where to start on fixing that.

Any progress on this?

[Erowind]

 

Update: The backup has been running at a smooth 29Kbs for about 8 hours now. So far 2GB of data have been saved with a 5.33% error rate per 5,849 files saved. Here's hoping that's not too many errors to break the mirror, as I wouldn't even know where to start on fixing that.

Any progress on this?

 

 

Yes, I figured out how to increase the speed to about 120Kb/s and restarted the mirror last night. We're up to 9GB now! That might not seem like a lot but it took 2 days to get to 5GB on the old speed.

 

I also tested the incomplete backup and everything that was downloaded seemed to work just like the real site, excluding being able to login and post of course.

[Erowind]

Update: 10.8GB archived

 

Note: It's surreal looking through the image files. The folder for imgur is like a timecapsule of internet culture over the past decade.

[BasilBerylium]

https://web.archive....visual-history/

[caltrek]

This is really incredible folks.  One of the reasons I post so much here is the idea that what I write might be available to future historians.  Of course, I always figured that was a long shot. It is really exciting to see that these steps are being taken, not just for my sake but for all of those people who have contributed their own ideas and links.

 

I will probably keep posting here right up until the new forum comes on line.  Even if my latest posts are not saved.  I don't consider it a waste any more than I would consider it a waste to talk with an acquaintance at a restaurant bar or some other public hangout.  The idea that my posts might survive the day is just frosting on the cake.