Archive/backup of this forum? |
Archive/backup of this forum? |
Mon, 3 Aug 2020 - 14:55
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#1
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Member Group: Members Posts: 66 Joined: 13 Dec 2010 Member No.: 42,848 |
This forum is very important for motorists.
The nature of the internet is transient; Any number of technical or political issues could result in this forum ceasing to operate. I don't think the Web Archive project indexes message boards like this very well. Anyone can scrape the forum but that would take some effort so is less likely to happen. For those reasons, is there a publicly accessible mirror of this site? If not, may I request that a copy of the backup data be made available at regular intervals, say once a month? I realise that the information on this site will gradually become out of date as time passes, and it's probably of limited historical significance, but nevertheless an easily accessible public backup would provide an immediate safety net in case of mishap. If you tell me that the site is backed up privately, that's great. But if whoever holds the backup is unable or unwilling to bring the site back up at the appropriate time, then that's not of much use. What do the owners think? |
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Mon, 3 Aug 2020 - 14:55
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Mon, 3 Aug 2020 - 15:04
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#2
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Webmaster Group: Root Admin Posts: 8,205 Joined: 30 Mar 2003 From: Wokingham, UK Member No.: 2 |
The database behind the forums is backed up daily on the server, and monthly offline in case of some more drastic calamity. It's obviously open to anyone who was interested to mirror the public parts of the forums (as long as it was done intelligently to avoid placing an unreasonable load on the server), but I'm not sure who would want to take that on.
-------------------- Regards,
Fredd __________________________________________________________________________
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Tue, 4 Aug 2020 - 15:10
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#3
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Member Group: Members Posts: 66 Joined: 13 Dec 2010 Member No.: 42,848 |
Okay great!
I will send you a private message asking for the details. I doubt I'll have time to put up a front-end, but at least I can copy the database. I'm glad to have discussed this possibility. I would encourage others to also request permission to copy the database. |
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Tue, 4 Aug 2020 - 18:28
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#4
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Webmaster Group: Root Admin Posts: 8,205 Joined: 30 Mar 2003 From: Wokingham, UK Member No.: 2 |
Uh - sorry, but no chance. The database doesn't just contain publicly available posts, but registration details, private messages, Moderation records, IP addresses, email addresses, ... I'd be spending a lot of time having unpleasant conversations with the ICO if we transferred the database to some other organisation or individuals. You'd need to do something similar to what Google does, and scrape the public posts.
-------------------- Regards,
Fredd __________________________________________________________________________
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Sun, 16 Aug 2020 - 17:03
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#5
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Member Group: Members Posts: 38,006 Joined: 3 Dec 2010 Member No.: 42,618 |
I would add that such a historic database would be of limited practical value. Cases that were a trump card as little as 12-18 months ago are now worthless as things have moved on, regulations / TMOs have changed, road layouts have been updated and so on. To illustrates, Nigel Rhodes v City of York Council (YR05035C, 28 March 2014), Watkin and others v Manchester City Council (MC01044-1808, 29 January 2019), Tahir Hussain v Manchester City Council (MC01121-1809, 20 March 2019), Yadevinder Hothi v London Borough of Hounslow (2180474156, 05 January 2019), Nisha Patel v London Borough of Hounslow (2190096099, 13 April 2019), all great cases and reliable persuasive authorities when they came out, all worth diddly squat now.
-------------------- If you would like assistance with a penalty charge notice, please post a thread on https://www.ftla.uk/index.php
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Wed, 16 Mar 2022 - 09:35
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#6
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Member Group: Members Posts: 11 Joined: 15 Mar 2022 Member No.: 116,006 |
Nobody was suggesting to share private and personal details.
Preserving the history of this forum, as a part of our shared culture should not need any further explanation. I would like to be part of a coordinated effort to back up / archive / mirror / preserve the publicly accessible post content. What is the current state of the forum data, and what would be involved in making the public parts more accessible to archive? Especially considering a web crawler would be hampered by the "expiring posts" feature -- many posts aren't visible anymore. This post has been edited by Peter255: Wed, 16 Mar 2022 - 09:37 |
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Wed, 16 Mar 2022 - 10:21
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#7
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Member Group: Members Posts: 7,235 Joined: 5 Jan 2007 From: England Member No.: 9,919 |
obviously not foremost in your thoughts....It took a year and a half to come back with a reply.
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Thu, 17 Mar 2022 - 14:58
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#8
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Member Group: Members Posts: 11 Joined: 15 Mar 2022 Member No.: 116,006 |
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Thu, 17 Mar 2022 - 15:33
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#9
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Member Group: Members Posts: 7,235 Joined: 5 Jan 2007 From: England Member No.: 9,919 |
First off apologies for some reason I thought you were the OP
however it appears fredd has already given his opinion on the matter. |
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Thu, 31 Mar 2022 - 22:01
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#10
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Member Group: Members Posts: 3,306 Joined: 4 Mar 2017 Member No.: 90,659 |
I already have a copy of everything. If you are technical just use curl, grep and sed to scrape all the data into a new database. I usually set it to run over four hours overnight every so often so it doesn't impact on the server.
There is little value in having the database unless you actually want to try and setup forum software that's been discontinued for almost a decade. You would do better writing a script to copy everything into a modern forum database format if you wanted a semi-working forum, and just run it every so often. Then you would have a backup forum sans active user accounts and PMs. Either way, the topics are all have sequential IDs so very simple to download everything if you want to. |
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