4 ms·

And you'll abandon those forums one day, and a month after, i'll search for some niche problem, someone will link to that forum, and there will be no archive(.o

And you'll abandon those forums one day, and a month after, i'll search for some niche problem, someone will link to that forum, and there will be no archive(.org) page, no google cached page, no nothing to get the answer.

buro9 3y ago
I've only ever shuttered one forum, and that was at the behest of the community itself. A decade in and it had become a toxic place, everyone agreed that they wanted to give multiple new things a try and that the place in question should be deleted. Not archived, not available forever, but deleted and nothing kept of it. I obliged. When the day comes that I shutter another I'll ask the active members at the time what they want to happen to their data. They may desire to leave it as a resource, they may want to delete it, if there's a clear majority in the decision I'll go with whatever they desire. I value the choice of those whose data it is, who contributed to creating it, over anyone else's hypothetical needs.
- cesarb 3y ago
  > When the day comes that I shutter another I'll ask the active members at the time what they want to happen to their data. You might not have that chance; unless you have a co-admin with full access to everything, the reason for the forum to shut down might be because you're no longer there.
  - KyeRussell 3y ago
    And? In this hypothetical situation where they “aren’t around”, I don’t think that people searching for answers to tech support issues are high on their list of concerns, and - probably - almost certainly those of the forum members.
    - hammyhavoc 3y ago
      "And" the availability of information is important. Respectfully, on most forums, I don't care about the community, I care about the content, that's why I'm there, to have discourse and generate meaningful value in the form of knowledge. If someone passes, yes, that sucks, but that's life, we're all snuffing it at some point. However, the world carries on spinning, and that information should continue to be available, especially if the forum is for a niche and frequently generates useful information. If a forum is becoming "toxic" then that sounds like a moderation problem.
      - arpa 3y ago
        It seems like these kind of forums are not exactly your area of interest, if they're community focused. Information gets snuffed out all the time, with every death of a person we lose large piece of information, but hoarding, and especially expecting others to hoard or assist hoarding is not the correct approach to what is essentially a _you_ problem, so grab that terabyte disk and make a mirror yourself if you are so inclined. Nobody is or should be required to let corpo behemoths in for your convenience and to comply with your questionable opinions.
        hammyhavoc 3y ago
        I'm part of several digital archivism projects. My personal disk array is 54TB of data. That's without even getting into 1PB+ of data on LTO carts. Last time I checked, Archive.org et al weren't a "corpo behemoth", but consuming server resources is exactly what a normal user does. Site owners should get with the times and serve up cached static pages to users who aren't logged in. Even then, they should be serving up cached static pages and rebuilding cache for relevant pages when someone posts new content when it comes to forums. Not being able to handle a few crawlers is an administration problem. Why should the community/public suffer for someone's inability to configure a server appropriately?
        arpa 3y ago
        We live in primarily free societies where individual has the right to decide upon their actions. Telling people that there is only one "correct" way of doing things is obnoxious and toxic and reflects upon your inability to see your opinion for what it is, an opinion. My opinion is that "screw crawlers and scrapers" is a valid opinion. If i'm hosting a playground, it's my playground and my rules. If you want to play elsewhere, please do. If you want to preserve data, please do, but not at my expense. Disagree with that? feel free to, but don't think that you are somehow in the right, because if you go with this shit to court, you will be laughed out of the door.
fdoifdsfdsa 3y ago
Why are forum admins beholden to archive their data in perpetuity in case someone wants free advice or knowledge? Do you maintain a freely-available repository of all of your knowledge and experience, in case someone else wants to consult it one day? While the openness of the (now-ending) early days of the internet was liberating and allowed knowledge sharing on an unprecedented scale, the downside is the huge devaluing of that knowledge and skills.
- deely3 3y ago
  So this data will not be losted forever? Also, do you mean that all data and all posts made by users should belong to admins only and only admins should decide what to do with it?
  - ipaddr 3y ago
    Those are the terms usually.
- trifurcate 3y ago
  > Do you maintain a freely-available repository of all of your knowledge and experience, in case someone else wants to consult it one day? No, but I try to maintain some of it, and I see the value in maintaining as much of it as possible.
- bakugo 3y ago
  If it's a forum, I assume not all of the content is created by the owner.
- 6510 3y ago
  I do actually but it is up to the person. The main reason for me to encourage it is that if knowledge is reserved for the high priests it will eventually be lost. How many civilizations did we build by now? No one knows! We haven't the records. The stuff people must have figured out. Of course may would pretend it wasn't a big deal but all those deleted forums had plenty of insights to offer. Practical ones and historically valuable. The real value of knowledge doesn't change if you duplicate it or make it widely available. On the long term, blocking access and rent seeking doesn't create value, it destroys it. It seems useful for the individual who wants to pay their bills or for the one with insatiable greed but in the end it will makes us stupid. For example: I would like a high quality UV-B lamp that isn't INSANELY expensive. They are pretty ordinary lamps but developing the coating is very expensive. The work has been done tho, lots of times, over and over again. Most results are just bad. About 35% of the US and about 1 billion globally have vitamin D deficiency, 50% has an insufficiency: Fatigue, Not sleeping well, Bone pain or achiness, Depression or feelings of sadness, Hair loss, Muscle weakness, Loss of appetite, Getting sick more easily, etc Great loss of economic productivity or more opportunity for me? You decide!
throwwwaway69 3y ago
And the perpetual tale of the forum post that says "this has been asked before, use the search" and the first search result is this person saying to use search

buro9 3y ago

I've only ever shuttered one forum, and that was at the behest of the community itself. A decade in and it had become a toxic place, everyone agreed that they wanted to give multiple new things a try and that the place in question should be deleted. Not archived, not available forever, but deleted and nothing kept of it. I obliged. When the day comes that I shutter another I'll ask the active members at the time what they want to happen to their data. They may desire to leave it as a resource, they may want to delete it, if there's a clear majority in the decision I'll go with whatever they desire. I value the choice of those whose data it is, who contributed to creating it, over anyone else's hypothetical needs.

cesarb 3y ago
> When the day comes that I shutter another I'll ask the active members at the time what they want to happen to their data. You might not have that chance; unless you have a co-admin with full access to everything, the reason for the forum to shut down might be because you're no longer there.
- KyeRussell 3y ago
  And? In this hypothetical situation where they “aren’t around”, I don’t think that people searching for answers to tech support issues are high on their list of concerns, and - probably - almost certainly those of the forum members.
  - hammyhavoc 3y ago
    "And" the availability of information is important. Respectfully, on most forums, I don't care about the community, I care about the content, that's why I'm there, to have discourse and generate meaningful value in the form of knowledge. If someone passes, yes, that sucks, but that's life, we're all snuffing it at some point. However, the world carries on spinning, and that information should continue to be available, especially if the forum is for a niche and frequently generates useful information. If a forum is becoming "toxic" then that sounds like a moderation problem.
    - arpa 3y ago
      It seems like these kind of forums are not exactly your area of interest, if they're community focused. Information gets snuffed out all the time, with every death of a person we lose large piece of information, but hoarding, and especially expecting others to hoard or assist hoarding is not the correct approach to what is essentially a _you_ problem, so grab that terabyte disk and make a mirror yourself if you are so inclined. Nobody is or should be required to let corpo behemoths in for your convenience and to comply with your questionable opinions.
      - hammyhavoc 3y ago
        I'm part of several digital archivism projects. My personal disk array is 54TB of data. That's without even getting into 1PB+ of data on LTO carts. Last time I checked, Archive.org et al weren't a "corpo behemoth", but consuming server resources is exactly what a normal user does. Site owners should get with the times and serve up cached static pages to users who aren't logged in. Even then, they should be serving up cached static pages and rebuilding cache for relevant pages when someone posts new content when it comes to forums. Not being able to handle a few crawlers is an administration problem. Why should the community/public suffer for someone's inability to configure a server appropriately?
        arpa 3y ago
        We live in primarily free societies where individual has the right to decide upon their actions. Telling people that there is only one "correct" way of doing things is obnoxious and toxic and reflects upon your inability to see your opinion for what it is, an opinion. My opinion is that "screw crawlers and scrapers" is a valid opinion. If i'm hosting a playground, it's my playground and my rules. If you want to play elsewhere, please do. If you want to preserve data, please do, but not at my expense. Disagree with that? feel free to, but don't think that you are somehow in the right, because if you go with this shit to court, you will be laughed out of the door.

fdoifdsfdsa 3y ago

Why are forum admins beholden to archive their data in perpetuity in case someone wants free advice or knowledge? Do you maintain a freely-available repository of all of your knowledge and experience, in case someone else wants to consult it one day? While the openness of the (now-ending) early days of the internet was liberating and allowed knowledge sharing on an unprecedented scale, the downside is the huge devaluing of that knowledge and skills.

deely3 3y ago
So this data will not be losted forever? Also, do you mean that all data and all posts made by users should belong to admins only and only admins should decide what to do with it?
- ipaddr 3y ago
  Those are the terms usually.
trifurcate 3y ago
> Do you maintain a freely-available repository of all of your knowledge and experience, in case someone else wants to consult it one day? No, but I try to maintain some of it, and I see the value in maintaining as much of it as possible.
bakugo 3y ago
If it's a forum, I assume not all of the content is created by the owner.
6510 3y ago
I do actually but it is up to the person. The main reason for me to encourage it is that if knowledge is reserved for the high priests it will eventually be lost. How many civilizations did we build by now? No one knows! We haven't the records. The stuff people must have figured out. Of course may would pretend it wasn't a big deal but all those deleted forums had plenty of insights to offer. Practical ones and historically valuable. The real value of knowledge doesn't change if you duplicate it or make it widely available. On the long term, blocking access and rent seeking doesn't create value, it destroys it. It seems useful for the individual who wants to pay their bills or for the one with insatiable greed but in the end it will makes us stupid. For example: I would like a high quality UV-B lamp that isn't INSANELY expensive. They are pretty ordinary lamps but developing the coating is very expensive. The work has been done tho, lots of times, over and over again. Most results are just bad. About 35% of the US and about 1 billion globally have vitamin D deficiency, 50% has an insufficiency: Fatigue, Not sleeping well, Bone pain or achiness, Depression or feelings of sadness, Hair loss, Muscle weakness, Loss of appetite, Getting sick more easily, etc Great loss of economic productivity or more opportunity for me? You decide!

throwwwaway69 3y ago

And the perpetual tale of the forum post that says "this has been asked before, use the search" and the first search result is this person saying to use search