Ambrosia Software Web Board: Archives' idea - Ambrosia Software Web Board

I have an idea on how to get archives to work on the new boards. A topic could be created (labeled something like "Cythera Archives") with links to all the topics which were in the archives on the old boards. When all the links were added, the topic would then be pinned.

One problem. To prevent discrepancies between archived topics and the topics still on the forums, the originals were deleted when archived.

Well, they were removed from the main boards. But they weren't deleted, per se, so much as made inaccessible.

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/webboard/Archive...3-5-000501.html will still work, for example.

If we can find the topic urls of all the archived posts, we can save them, but that might not be easy.

Hey! That sounds like a job for Bryce and his webcrawlers. Presumably, if one were to check all Cytheran topics of the form "http://www.ambrosiasw.com/webboard/Forum5/HTML/xxxxxx.html", then you could test each line against "Archive-000003" to find links to archive topics.

Unfortunately, the url of an archived post seems to incorporate the date it was archived, which means that just the topic ids are not enough :/

Of course, we could also ask Andrew for the list (I don't think it would be too hard to find).

We archived most topics in batches, and there weren't that many.

The Cythera topic that were archived still exist in the old topics on the new boards (such as Once Again on page 34 of show all topics). What I meant is we make a list of all the old topics that were archived and then provide links to them in a pinned topic.
Archive topics (the ones I am fairly sure were there):
Once Again on page 34
The Evil Clone on page 30
Tavern Continued on page 27
The Coming of the Dragon on page 27
The Search for the Thieve's Cavern on page 24 (I think)
The Alraeican Tavern, Part III on page 23
The Quest for the Unknown Power (team story) on page 22 (I think)
The Alraeican Tavern, Part IV on page 21
Requiem (team story) on page 21
The tale of the Treasure on page on page 20
The Air-Castle (TS) on page 20
A New Story on page 20
LKH (for story) on page ?
The Undine Stronghold on page ?

(I'm not sure what Alraecian Tavern Numbers were in the archives.)

P.S. Show all hot topics shows most of them.

This post has been edited by Selax: 03 October 2004 - 04:39 PM

Hm, that must be the archive fix, because I'm pretty sure they were deleted on the old boards when transferred to the archive, that's good.

As the current tavern is part 7, there should be six parts in total. Some might not have been archived, but following tradition they would've been cleaned and archived.

Since the archives were pretty much TSes and Taverns, why not extend the idea and just make a "story index" page - perhaps ordered in reverse chronological order of stories. (not when each story took place, since that'd be a mess, but chronological based on the time and year they were running) The few stories that actually fit together in sequence could be separated out and arranged in the order they go.

Also, the new software allows for correcting of topic typos.

Perhaps something like:

The Alraeican Tavern:
Tavern Continued on page 27
The Alraeican Tavern, Part III on page 23
The Alraeican Tavern, Part IV on page 21

Team Stories:
The Search for the Thieve's Cavern on page 24 (I think)
The Quest for the Unknown Power (team story) on page 22 (I think)
Requiem (team story) on page 21

Insert Fitting Subgroup Title Here
LKH (for story) on page ?
A New Story on page 20

Stand-Alone Stories:
The Air-Castle (TS) on page 20
The tale of the Treasure on page 20
The Coming of the Dragon on page 27
The Evil Clone on page 30
The Undine Stronghold on page ? (second story, should be 3x)
Once Again on page 34

Though this list only carries through the end of 2002, I believe.

So should I start a poll to see who thinks that the archives should be preserved or just start a topic and do it? And where are the Undine Stronghold and LKH (for story)?

This post has been edited by Selax: 05 October 2004 - 07:37 PM

I would think an appropriate format would be:


Taverns
The Alraecian Tavern
• Part VII - Current
• Part VI - through 6/13/04
• Part V - through 7/16/02
• ...

Team Stories
Echoes from the Past - Current
The Alliance of Living Things - through 4/13/04
Destruction of Omega 9 - through 2/16/03
The Kul'Shar Legacy
• Part II: Inversions - through 12/26/02
• Part I: Arrival - through 1/30/02
...

Of course, the links are just placeholders. However, I don't think it would be too hard to create a utility that would spit out the formatted output of an archive topic.

Well, I found The Undine Stronghold at http://www.ambrosiasw.com/webboard/Archive...9-5-000513.html .

Interestingly enough, I found it from Google. Best of Cythera turns up nothing, though. Perhaps a search for other unfound stories may prove profitable.

Well, I found the link to LKH (for story) but it doesn't work. It is http://www.ambrosias...TML/000572.html (I think that it is the right topic; it is off of Tavern continued, I believe). (Just search for the keyword "homeland"). But I have tried searching for it on google and have found nothing. Anyone have ideas as to how to find this story? Anyone have it in the history (or cache) of the computer or know someone who saved a copy of it?

I suppose that we could always try to write a new one following the old story line.

This post has been edited by Selax: 06 October 2004 - 08:13 PM

Thanks to this topic, Pallas finding the archive link format, and Selax finding the topic number...

Voila! The missing LKH story!