What happens to older threads?

[drew]

I was trying to find a thread from awhile back, and had no luck with the search engine.

The Tube Amp Building - Tweeks - Repairs forum current displays 44 pages, going back to June 15, 2008.  Do older threads just get pushed off the server if they aren't tagged for the Archives of Favorite Topics forum?

[tubenit]

Yes, they eventually "fall off".

Tubenit

[drew]

Huh.  The good info-to-dreck ratio at this place is pretty high; it seems a shame to just be throwing a lot of it away.

[EL34]

Anything older than  a year on the main amp board gets deleted.

moderators are allowed to move stuff worth saving to the archives, so that stuff is still here.

61 pages of post seems to be enough.
What exactly are you looking for that can't be found in the 22,563 post that are already on the big board?

[drew]

I was looking for a thread I remembered about one of plexi50's projects.  No big deal.

I can understand the concept of the Archives forum, but in practice, hardly anything is moved there.  Plus, in this era of 1TB hard drives that cost what, 80 bucks or so now, why not just save everything and not have to rely on moderators to make the call on what is or is not worth saving? 

(I'll be the first to admit, I don't know much about what's involved in running and funding a forum like this, so if it's not just a matter of adding a little more data storage, so be it.)

[EL34]

plexi probably has info on his project.

I do backups on the forum all the time and edit tons of files on el34world.

It's not about the server disk drive space,
It's more about having good backups and how long it takes me to download and save forum data to my local hard drives,
how long it takes me to open and load el34world into my web editing software,
and how fast and snappy the forum pages load.

Anyone that thinks a post deserves to be archived just has to ask a moderator if they think it should.
Then they can move it if they agree.

The mods aren't gonna do anything unless the members speak up and decide it's a good thread and should be saved.

Also, if you think a post is something that only you want to save, save it to your local hard drive from your browser.
I do that all the time with web pages I want to keep.

[jhadhar65]

>...save it to your local hard drive from your browser.

I do that, too.  Save it as an .mht file in IE or look into the Un-MHT add-on for Firefox.  There are probably similar solutions for Chrome, Opera, Konqueror, or whatever you use.  If there aren't, then that's all the more reason to use Firefox anyway.  I've got a ton of good threads from the past.  I don't use Copernic or Google desktop, but those "might" also be able to search for keywords within mht files, making your personal archive all the more rewarding.  You'd have to research that part if you're a Copernic or Google user.

Of course, when I identify a thread I decide I don't want to save, it never fails that I'll want to reference it months later and can't find it.  Still, though, my personal archive has helped me a lot.

[EL34]

Never used the .mht thing on IE, wasn't quite sure what that file type was.

I always save as wepage complete if I need all the other goodies on the page like images, links, etc
or I save as just webpage html only if it's a simple text file.

[jhadhar65]

.mht saves it the same way, except it's all bundled into one file instead of an html page and a supporting folder.

[EL34]

Ah, ok, that's pretty handy.
And I suppose the browser understand what to do with it all no problem.

I'll have to give the .mht thing a try.

[jhadhar65]

>And I suppose the browser understand what to do with it all no problem.

It does.  If you're a Firefoxer, you can go into file types and set Firefox as the default program to open them with.  Otherwise, they'll default to IE.  I use PortableApps Firefox, so mine has to open in IE, but I don't mind it.  If you're an IE user anyway, you're all set.

[EL34]

good info.