Forums closing at the end of January - Alternatives?

There's no user data in a post besides the user's public post. I don't think it would be an issue with gdpr since an archive isn't the original publisher, but a copy. Again, the legal aspects to this are a lot more minor than they look on paper as enforcement is nearly nil for situations like this.

 

Actually, unless you physically own the server and the internet connection that it is on, it is the service providers that will be handed a DCMA takedown request and will simply turn off your server/connection. But again, this would have to be initiated by the legal department of a company that's willing to push the issue. If the group is completely downsizing or getting out of forums, their legal department won't really be up to filing suit for copies of the data floating around imo.

 

It wouldn't. GDPR applies to the original publisher and only to users in the EU.

 

Feel free to share and check out the forum!

EFGXT.NET

Name is a placeholder until a domain can be purchased that better captures the forum.

 

I'm throwing my effort behind the attempt by @Reciever to stand up a new forum. We have a new Precision section. I have a "key posts" thread which will have links to some particularly useful posts, mostly living currently at the NBR forum but I'll change the links to point to the archive once I have it online. Over time there will be more links to threads on the new forum as content on the old becomes less relevant. The Dell Fan Management software download and documentation will also live here. Feel free to go ahead and set up new system owner's threads. (Do try to group together the 15" and 17" version of each system where appropriate, since they are so similar.)

This new forum is built on a more modern platform than the current one. There is a WYSIWYG editor, dark mode (check the "Theme" menu at the bottom), and actually decent responsive/mobile layout. There will be more improvements over the coming days and weeks (we don't even have a final name yet). I hope that some of you hop over and check it out.

I'd like to see the new forum managed by people who have been involved in the community for a while and are well respected. I hope some of the current mods come over as well and we are able to get up and running pretty quickly as if nothing has changed. I know that there has been another forum stood up, and I hate that having multiple could lead to fracturing the community. But, I feel that @Reciever is more established in the Notebook Review community and is also being more active with engaging with the current community for thoughtful feedback rather than just plowing ahead and making unilateral decisions for the sake of being "fast" or "first". But, in the end, everyone has a choice and can choose to visit one or both or neither of the new options.

I previously mentioned that I was setting up a Precision subreddit, but I am pausing on those plans since a new forum has emerged.

Tagging a few folks who I figured would want to know. (Sorry to whoever I forgot; I tried to get anyone I can remember who has been active recently but I know that there are many more users who regularly frequent here.)
@Dell-Mano_G @Reciever @Ionising_Radiation @TheQuentincc @win32asmguy @rinconmike @unnoticed @summersun @frostbytes @alittleteapot @jbuildit @CLASSIF1ED @etern4l @hertzian56 @slimpower @ccvortex @zhongze12345 @jack574 @SvenC @maxslo @Razibus @song_1118

 

*ponders how to pronounce "EFGXT". concludes its unpronouncability makes it a better name *

I've continued archival efforts. Still with a focus on grabbing the content first since that's what has a time limit. So far that means all of HP Business Class, Microsoft, and Panasonic (caveat: some threads tripped up the archiver, e.g. a thread where one page only had 9 posts instead of 10 due to a bug. I've been improving the archiver over the past couple days as well, to reduce the likelihood of this and improve the quality of the archived posts; they now look like NBR posts, albeit without sigs). Starting with MSI, I set a limit of 80 replies to a thread for it to be archived, to help speed things up a bit. I'm now running it against the main Dell forum (not the Precision or XPS ones).

With HP I was archiving about 40 pages of threads per hour, with Microsoft and Panasonic about 60 per hour. By setting a minimum of 80 replies, that sped up to about 105 per hour on the MSI sub-forum. For the main Dell one, I've set a minimum of 100 replies.

The limit of 80 replies reduced the number of threads archived by about 98%. However, the remaining 2% were the largest threads that took the longest to download, which is why the speedup was less than double.

I'll be using these statistics to estimate what I should set the minimum at in order to have the most-likely-to-be-important threads from each of the manufacturer forums in time.

Longer-term (post-January), I'd rather not be the main librarian, and would prefer to transfer what I've archived to someone else as librarian. I'm not a web admin person, and am better at coding and identifying what's broken and how to fix it than running a server. But I ought to be able to keep it locally until that time. The MSI one, with the reply limit, takes up less than 1 GB (including images), and all of Panasonic is 5 GB. With the limits imposed by download speed, it will probably weight in at less than Cyberpunk 2077.

After the Dell section, I'll go Lenovo, and as that will cover all machines I have, I'll then go alphabetical by manufacturer name, including sub-forums when applicable (I'll skip Buy/Sell/Trade sub-forums). Happy to alter the plan if some of them are already covered but for now I'm assuming only the Precision one is. Might do Hardware as well, there are some good threads there like Bye Bye Super Pi.

I'll be joining Receiver's forum too, so you can ping me there if you want to combine archives at some point.

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I'll also have to try out that fan software if I ever put a 64-bit Windows version on my Dell again. I've been running I8Kfangui on it for years and this looks like the proper successor... alas it's a dual-boot of Linux Mint 20.x and XP 32-bit as my retro game box/mobile Linux system currently.