The preservation of forum knowledge

[robv]

This forum has gathered a wealth of information over the years. I think we all agree that all this knowledge should be preserved. A few questions come to mind. And it reminds me that it's time to make my yearly donation to keep the forum online.

- Is there a period of inactivity after which a user gets deleted automatically or after human inspection?
- What happens if a user decides to delete his account?
- How's the backup situation?

Some examples to illustrate.
1.
I was a member of this forum from the early days. About a year ago, after a period of inactivity (few years?) I could not login. My browser remembered my old username and password, but the forum had lost all traces of me. So I had to sign up again. No big deal, after all my contributions were not that valuable. But what if this had happened to one of the Atari Gods around here? We would have lost a lot of knowledge.

2.
A friend of mine decided to cancel his Facebook account. That implied all his posts got deleted as well. All according to Facebook's privacy policy. (I know, using the words 'Facebook' and 'privacy' in one sentence is a gotspe.) Now what if one of the Atari Gods decides to cancel. Would be a disaster if we had to delete all the godly input. But I think we can get away with privacy here as everyone uses a nickname.

3.
Backups cost money.

You may think, who cares if the rantings of a bunch of old geezers on a long forgotten computer get lost forever. But the same goes for, let's say, many mediaeval manuscripts. And I know there's still a lot to be learned from those.
So I think we should take good care of what has been collected here. Otherwise we would need some volunteers to carve the complete postings into a rock. Like the Rosetta Stone.

Any thoughts?

[stormy]

The guys on the Exxos forum have thought about this and from the beginning they make sure as a rule that everyone uploads images to the server, not just pasting links to external sites, this means information isn't lost over time due to other websites or image hosting sites changing or disappearing.

Also as far as user content goes, their posts remain even though the user may be gone. A good example is Simbo. You'll find his disjointed ramblings all over the place still even today.

I think AF does need to think about this, as you rightly point out.

[czietz]

I make sure (albeit only sporadically) that threads on this forum where I'm involved get archived by the Internet archive's Wayback Machine. Not a perfect solution, because it's hard to search for keywords, but at least I could still link to "FAQ"-like postings such as the following one even if the forum went down: https://web.archive.org/web/20200627085 ... 99&start=0

[wongck]

I guess no one really knew this... I was transferring good information here to the wiki after categorising and consolidating it. Of course most of it points to the posting itself. This was over 10 years ago IIRC A task I took on myself, only Dal knew this back then.

Pity that the wiki is down now. If the wiki is back, may be someone can continue to do that....

The readonly wiki can be found https://temlib.org/AtariForumWiki/index.php/Main_Page

[stormy]

It's a shame all your hard work ultimately has not been 'embraced' into a proper, editable, living wiki Wong ;(

It might be worth the Mods of AF to look into a kind of 'databaseless' flat-file wiki system, which is easily transferred around without having to worry about database issues.... OR, Exxos is currently making one of these and merging all his research and website content along with forum articles and guides into the wiki. You might want to think about transferring some of your hard work over there instead.

https://www.exxoshost.co.uk/forum/viewt ... =13&t=4787

[ThorstenOtto]

There is also the question about the "copyright" of any postings. If a user quits (for whatever reason) and requests his posts do be deleted, then i think the moderators have to obey that, be it for moral or legal reasons.

[calimero]

Maybe we should start to use Tim Berns Lee “pods”...

Nice to see that people do think about digital legacy.

[wongck]

about database issues.... OR, Exxos is currently making one of these and merging all his research and website content along with forum articles and guides into the wiki. You might want to think about transferring some of your hard work over there instead.

https://www.exxoshost.co.uk/forum/viewt ... =13&t=4787

I am getting too old for this sh*t now.
Someone else can do that easily... just copy from the read-only AF wiki FAQ section and paste it to the other place. They are mostly a sentence or two of what's the topic about and then URL to AF posts. I guess these are not copyright in anyway as they contain nothing of the actual post but just referencing to it. Unless that 1-2 sentences and URL reference are copyrighted by AF itself... I dunno.

[robv]

Nice to see that people do think about digital legacy.

Digital legacy is certainly something to think about. Not only at the global level, but also at the personal level.
Recently I tried to read a 25-year old CD-Rom on which I thought I had safely backed up my 90s stuff. I could only read parts of it, most directories seem to have gone to digital heaven. Even average quality paper lasts longer.

[Grabulosaure]

Hello.

About the Atari-Forum Wiki.
I've been hosting the read-only mirror for a while now.

If the original Wiki cannot be fixed, I could grant access to some users if they want to add content to my copy.
(note that my snapshot was done before the original went back online in 2020)

[sety]

Also as far as user content goes, their posts remain even though the user may be gone. A good example is Simbo. You'll find his disjointed ramblings all over the place still even today.

Believe it or not, those disjointed ramblings have been quite helpful for me in solving some of my own Falcon hardware repair issues. It does take considerable effort to interpret whatever language it is that he speaks. What ever happened to him anyway?

[stormy]

As far as I know he stole some stuff from people on this forum then stopped posting (I think some ST Books?) Then his account got deleted.