Forum Topic Pruning: SOS needs your help

[Forum Admin]

Of course there's the Internet Wayback Machine as a possible way to retrieve a page if you know what you're looking for.

Just checked and indeed the superb Wayback Machine does appear to have archived the old website's Forum posts, as this example demonstrates:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150403153000/http://www.soundonsound.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=516806&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1#516806

I've had a rummage to see if it keeps an archive of the current SOS website's Forum -- and indeed, it does!

https://web.archive.org/web/20200502123830/https://www.soundonsound.com/forum

Wayback obviously crawls our site frequently and grabs "captures" of it. Here's the Wayback link to the existing Forum, so one must assume the Forum posts it has archived will never go away and are frozen in the sands of time?

If so, everyone has access to them as long as Wayback Archive stays around.

[Forum Admin]

Couldn't you just archive the Word Association thread instead?

I have made the WA topic a 'sticky' so it will not get pruned. However, at some point I will have to go back in and split it up into a few locked read-only topics to reduce the burden on the server of its current 1,168 pages. But that can wait a while yet...

[John Willett]

Couldn't you just archive the Word Association thread instead?

Fair point.

I've already had a request from a regular forum user not to prune that one

Martin

Maybe we could just delete the existing thread and start a new Word Association Thread with the last post of the old thread as the first of the new one.

How many people read old posts in that thread? It is just making it go forward that we want.

[Sam Spoons]

I'd agree with that.

[BJG145]

I've had a rummage to see if it keeps an archive of the current SOS website's Forum -- and indeed, it does!

https://web.archive.org/web/20200502123830/https://www.soundonsound.com/forum

Maybe...although if you start clicking through to topics, pages and threads, the links seem to break.

[jimjazzdad]

Probably not helpful in the current context, but how the heck does Gearslutz - whoops! I mean the site that must not be named - manage it? According to their site, they have 1,050,284 threads with 12,579,207 posts. And I have never noticed any 'pruning'.

[Forum Admin]

Probably not helpful in the current context, but how the heck does Gearslutz - whoops! I mean the site that must not be named - manage it? According to their site, they have 1,050,284 threads with 12,579,207 posts. And I have never noticed any 'pruning'.

Different beasts -- GS is purely a forum. SOS is an entire, very large site with many strings to its bow.

[John Egan]

You guys know what SoS can afford to store, but it seems to me that the topics below are the "SoS Core" topics :

Recording: Gear & Techniques
Music Theory, Songwriting & Composition
Mixing, Mastering & Post Production
Live Sound & Performance
SOS Support Forum

so my suggestion would be to prune these as lightly as possible, commensurate with the need to reduce the storage burden. Obviously other topics would then be subject to greater pruning.

Regards, John

[ManFromGlass]

OK I take back my post, Martin. Prune away at WA. I’ll count on the SOS hive mind to continue with witty and some downright funny associations!
Am I asking too much??

[Martin Walker]

OK I take back my post, Martin. Prune away at WA. I’ll count on the SOS hive mind to continue with witty and some downright funny associations!
Am I asking too much??

No you're not asking too much - I'm sure the hive mind will continue to keep this thread alive.

If we honestly thought that anyone would wade through all 1171 pages of this thread it might be worth keeping it all, but I seriously doubt that this will happen

It might be worth hanging on to the most recent few months, but not every word since October 2012

Martin

[Folderol]

Couldn't you just archive the Word Association thread instead?

Fair point.

I've already had a request from a regular forum user not to prune that one

Martin

Maybe we could just delete the existing thread and start a new Word Association Thread with the last post of the old thread as the first of the new one.

How many people read old posts in that thread? It is just making it go forward that we want.

Laugh if you like, but if I'm feeling a bit MEH two topics I do have a browse through are the word association one and the make up a lie one. Between them they brighten me up no end.

[Drew Stephenson]

But it would give us the opportunity to make all the same old jokes again.

[zenguitar]

But it would give us the opportunity to make all the same old jokes again.

Whilst neatly side-stepping plagiarism accusations.

Andy

[Dave B]

Whilst I understand the need for the pruning, do we need to do that on the User Reviews forum? I would have thought that this was an area with almost no duplication and worthy of saving for posterity..

[Forum Admin]

Whilst I understand the need for the pruning, do we need to do that on the User Reviews forum? I would have thought that this was an area with almost no duplication and worthy of saving for posterity..

Yes, I had already pegged User Reviews as a "keep all" scenario.

[Cool4music]

I'm interested to sign up.

However, is it not easier to delete any records prior to the said date from the database itself? I have worked as a dba and can assist on that activity (once the backup has been done.

[Forum Admin]

However, is it not easier to delete any records prior to the said date from the database itself?

Thanks for your kind offer, and that is precisely how our tech team will prune the database.

[cyrano.mac]

Hi Desmond,

We plan to take a full database backup prior to pruning and store it offline.

As to a text-dump, I've been told it's not a simple task since phpBB pulls in who posted, etc from our CMS user base, and it'll require our web team to spend expensive time to achieve this. That's time we don't have at present with all our other pressing projects and we urgently need to lighten the server load or we may find ourselves with patches of 'dark time', temporary Forum suspension, or any other undesirable scenario -- and commercially, that simply can't happen.

So the proposed solution is the optimal one.

I use Site Sucker...

https://ricks-apps.com/osx/sitesucker/

Makes a copy of the threads you want to remove, so you can post those as static html.

Takes some time, of course. I once downloaded an entire forum like this one, but a little bigger. Took about a week. Site Sucker can adjust links to fit the new root of the site.

Some forum software has a built-in archival function. PhpBB still doesn't have that?

[Studio Support Gnome]

Just to note.....

I am (not really) mildly offended that not every single word I have ever written on this site was considered sacrosanct and of inestimable value and preserved for eternity.....

not to mention the disappearance of several thousand posts from my total count......

and then there's the whole, previous editions of forum, and legendary threads like "the Xytar affair"

I mean. server space is infinite and free isn't it ???

***** distant sound of jingles as legs with bells on are pulled , then fed through a 2.8 second reverb with a 1.3 second pre-delay with the mix on 100% *******

[Forum Admin]

Leg duly pulled Max.

Due to overloaded Web team workload, the Forum Pruning we planned has slipped back and will begin some time in the future, so everyone's got longer to report their "must save" topics to Mods. Can't say exactly when it'll start.

[Sam Spoons]

I was reminded by a question today that my "generator for a small rig" thread from a few years ago might still be valid. I flagged it up as a possible for moving to the useful information forum but left the final decision to the mods? Will flag it again as I do think it contains useful information.

[Hugh Robjohns]

Done.

[Sam Spoons]

Thanks Hugh, though it was this earlier thread I reported with a view to preserving it https://www.soundonsound.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=36681#p335876

[Hugh Robjohns]

Too many Generator for a ... topics... But they are all preserved now!

...and I'm going for a lie down in a dark room. I may be some time....