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Seriously you guys, seriously.


Cerina
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I am all onboard with condensing to one board. It's the same two dozen people. If anything, it would make the board more active. I LOVE me some Reddit, but in a community message board, I prefer reading through all the posts in a linear fashion.

 

I would hate to lose the archives. Is there anyway we can save them into a pdf-type file?

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Guest El Chalupacabra

I think nightly should be condensed, but I think there should be multiple forums. I propose the following:

 

Keep

  • Star Wars: It is what got this board going. Wouldn't be nightly without a Star Wars board
  • The Cantinia: Seems to be a good catch all for everyone. Since it was already brought up, maybe make this the forum where you have to actually be a nightly member to view posts. This seems to be the forum where most of the personal conversation takes place, and would be ideal to keep more private
  • Lyceum: Doesn't get nearly the traffic it used to, but I personally think it gets enough traffic to keep around. IF nothing else, it keeps politics and controversial subjects that can cause arguments out of the other forums.

 

Combine

  • Combine Movies and TV with Superheroes: Superheroes seems to have a high traffic still but mostly they are movies and TV shows. Comic book events can fall under Books.
  • Combine Music, The Save Point, The Book Club, and Sports into one forum, and add Comic Books: By themselves, traffic seems pretty low to me. If they were all one forum, it may increase traffic in all the subjects.
  • Maybe combine Feedback with Cantina???? Seems like some feedback gets posted in the Cantina, anyway.

Delete

  • Delete the DIYorama: That place gets no traffic. Plus I am sick of seeing a hung over post of mine made last October as the last post made.
  • Delete the Archives, or at least only keep the last 4 years of posts. That may save some money. However, my personal vote would be to delete it all, and have mods purge their forums regularly, going back only 2 years in each forum. If you haven't revisited a topic in 2 years, you have likely forgotten it. And so has most everyone else.

This would leave nightly with 5-6 forums. I think it would save a lot of space, and may not only be easier to manage, but also may bring up post counts in forums that get less traffic.

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Dumb question from a guy who doesn't know much about tech, but are the archives even all that big of a deal in this day and age? How much memory can these posts take up? Almost all of them are straight-up text and links with a few photos tossed in here and there.

 

I know I've got several million words' worth of text saved on my fairly low end computer right now and it's barely making a dent in my memory.

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Seriously, important stuff actually happens when I go on vacation?

 

As a golden ager, I see no need to keep the archives.

 

But I do still want a place to come to talk about nerddom and random things that twitter is uncomfortably public for (I mean, if I'm going to criticize someone's acting or writing, I don't want to do it where they might possibly see it through a hashtag).

 

I'm cool with pruning deadwood and condensing forums.

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So even as a veteran, I am fine with cutting away the past. I think if the data could be stored, just so sensitive types know it is saved somewhere, that would be fine.

I think this is a fair compromise solution. Have the archives stored somewhere, even if in a user un-friendly format where you can't simply click/open. Then if someone wants to read them, it's incumbent upon that person to weed through it and figure out how to search through it and find what they're looking for.

 

That is assuming, of course, that the data can be stored/saved in a way that at least the text is legible. If there is no way to save it without it just being a giant block of garbled code, then I suppose there really isn't any point.

 

Would one of the admins/mods be willing to reach out to IPB support and see if they have any options for storing the archives (or for example, converting all the old archive text into a PDF or some other file(s) that can be downloaded and stored)? Alternatively, does the software have some type of option to pull all the text out (again, even if it ends up in a user un-friendly format, like one giant block of text?)

 

If there's literally no way to do this and the archives have to go, then it is what it is, but surely it's worth at least a brief moment to see what our options are before rushing to delete 10+ years of archives.

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There may be a way to do it, but JA is the only one who would be able to do it -- or at least, we'd need his help.

 

It would involve dumping the entire database (unreadable), importing it into a different system that can read it, and then exporting the relevant bits. I'm not 100% certain that is even possible, but I think it should be.

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  • 3 weeks later...

To be honest, I'm always surprised to discover that the place is still here. There isn't a lot of activity anymore, there are other places to discuss Star Wars and other movies, and the message board seems to be a dying format for discussions. Maybe a Facebook or Reddit page?

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  • 2 weeks later...
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  • 2 months later...

Sorry Nat and I didn't donate this year, just haven't been around and honestly now my donation money is being sucked up by my social causes. If I still had my server I'd offer space there for you guys but I lost it when I was laid off earlier this year. As much as I love the archives I do think the long term practical solution would be to downsize. As an old member that occasionally likes to live in the past and poke through it, as long as someone makes a dump of the files and stores it somewhere safe I think I'd be chill with it. Heck they could zip it up and make it available for a limited time so those of us who really would miss it can download it and store it for themselves. I'd rather be able to poke in here every so often and still be able to see how you all are doing rather than loose it completely cause we don't wanna clean out the closet.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm fairly certain we could all benefit if the Mara Jade II thread disappeared.

agreed. i've read it in the years since it's been archived, and while funny at the time, i actually think a lot of us come across as complete ***holes in that thread.

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I'm going to attempt to move the site, archives and all, to a new host by the end of the month. It'll be around $10-15/month to keep it going, instead of $50/month.

 

Hopefully it all goes smoothly, but if you show up one day and everything is on fire... Mandard did it.

 

But nah, we may just need to put the whole board into archive mode and start fresh. At least that way all the old posts are still around.

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