Forums closing at the end of January - Alternatives?

Well, my HP Business Class section backup is progressing. Some of the links were causing it to hang, so I had to add in an architectural layer to throw thread downloads into their own thread (an unfortunate terminology overlap), while still keeping everything serial instead of parallel to avoid sending too many requests. I'm probably following too many external links (my archiver's initial purpose was detecting dead links, especially external ones), but oddly enough an architectural change was the quick way to get things up and working. The downside is that it stop archiving a thread if it hits one of those landmine links (and I tried setting a sensible timeout per link but they were hanging the whole thread... I might investigate why tomorrow).

It's at about 10% after about an hour. The HP Business Class section is roughly 1/5th the size of the Vostro/Latitude/Precision one, so that means Aaron44126's backup is more efficient (30 hours versus 50 if we equalize the size), probably due to my backup tripping over those nasty external links. I've also spotted some issues caused by not being sufficiently NBR-tailored, and imgur images seem to be having problems. All things I can look at tomorrow, for now I'm going to let it keep running overnight. I'm tired anyway, and will make fewer mistakes when not tired.

I've also been doing all the posts per thread, then the next thread, rather than the first page of each thread, then the second, etc. There are merits to both approaches.

I'm currently thinking that after the HP Business Class, I'll probably look at prioritizing threads based on number of replies. The main HP forum has 32,000 threads; the main Dell one has 41,000. If each HP thread had one page, at 1 second per page, it would take 9 hours, and a lot of them have many pages. The HP forum has over 200 pages (which means over 4000 threads) that didn't receive any replies at all. With a limited time and thus page budget, it doesn't really make sense to prioritize those and leave out threads that are more likely to have practical information (owner's lounges, upgrade guides, etc. - things which drew enough interest to accumulate those replies).

By contrast, 260 threads on the main HP forum had 100+ replies. Some have a lot more; if I ballpark it to 500 replies on average across 260 threads, that's 13,000 pages, doable in less than 4 hours at 1 second per page. Still a lot. But I'm not sure how else to prioritize it in a semi-organized fashion.

----------

Hopefully this will all be irrelevant if the Internet Archive is involved. I found a post where a user mentions they're been in contact with them via IRC and they are interested. But I'd like to see something a bit more official, and the accessibility of information after archival is an unknown, too. Having a few parallel efforts focusing on different areas would seem to maximize the chances of having some information (and as importantly, knowledge) preserved. I'm also reminded that it took over a year after GeoCities went down before the GeoCities torrent first appeared, and even then it had a flaw that prevented it from completing its download. That effort didn't actually capture all of GeoCities, but drew data from multiple archivists' efforts to create the archive they did have.

There's some good reading on that, both the history of the archive and trips down nostalgia lane looking at (and sometimes interviewing the creators of) old sites at https://blog.geocities.institute; it's created by the folks responsible for the GeoCities torrent. Which is still out there if you're interested, and you don't actually have to download the whole thing.

 

Hosting the information anywhere might be deemed some sort of copyright violation depending on what the terms of service were/are for the content. Whether or not money is involved does not exempt one from copyright infringement claims.

That being said, as you mentioned the original authors of the content may be able to re-publish that content--unless there was a exclusivity or transfer of the copyright ownership to TechnologyGuide.

In reality, the content on this forum is bound by legal agreements and maybe even downloading this content isn't even allowed.

But the practical reality of it is since the company that has this content is going to destroy it, it was more than likely a grant of the copyright, not a transfer, so the content at its core is probably able to be published with permission from the original posters, but the likeness of this existing forum and anything that is protected by copyright probably is not.

The bottom line is that publishing this information on a new forum would only be subject to a DCMA takedown request, and that could be completely avoided by simply not publicly publishing the information. Anyone with a forum knows how to do this as there are always sections only available to registered users.

 

I joined Reddit a long time ago and am long-time financial backer of it, but in all honesty I hate it more than just about anything net related. I continue to back it for personal reasons, but I would never contribute any content there because it really is just one giant, vitriolic political echo chamber. I appreciate your suggestion and your past contributions to this forum, but if any of this moves to Reddit I won't be following it.

 

Since new forums are popping up, I’m pausing on Reddit. I’ll most likely be on the forum set up by @Reciever, which should be made available in the next day or two.

 

I’m advocating that the archives be made available separately from a new forum. I know that there are copyright issues in play but I think a fair use claim is reasonable if TechTarget is basically destroying it. But putting it on a new forum would expose that forum to risk as you say.

 

Right, I'm following that thread as well, thanks for the link.

 

It is just not the copyright issue but user data, gdpr and stuff like that.

 

Understood. In any case, I am assuming the "risk" by posting the archive of this section and keeping it separate from a new forum. If I have to take it down, then I have to take it down, but I rather suspect that TT will leave it alone.

 

Not sure why GDPR etc might apply to public static content containing no sensitive personal details.

 

It's not really a 'one or the other' choice, so if I was one of the new forum owners, I'd do it in a heartbeat as the same 'fair use' and other defenses could be used since a publisher is a publisher. Plus, as a forum owner, you can lock it behind a wall without public access. Car forums have done this for years.