Preserved Topic: Forum tidy too thorough? (Page 1 of 1)

Everyone has been doing a great job tidying up this forum but some posts linked to from the FAQ seems to have disappeared. Like in this FAQ:
http://faq.ozoneasylum.com/853/

this link, which contained all the important discussion, has gone missing presumed deleted (unless I'm being really dumb and I have missed it):
www.ozoneasylum.com/Forum1/HTML/005616.html

It is a tricky job deciding what stays in and what should go and until the forum and FAQ are intertwined things like this will keep happening. I don't think there is a simple solution (you can't search the FAQ to check to see if every post is mentioned in there as it would be too time consuming) so....... well I don't know - err on the side of caution and include things if you are unsure if they should stay or go (cue the Clash).

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Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Yeah, I think the big push happened a long way back when Doc was in need of freeing up server space.

My understanding, however, is that since the move to Dreamhost he no longer has the same constraints he used to, and it's not as imperative that things get so strictly cleaned up at this point.

That's certainly not a criticism, the poeple who have been keeping things clean have been doing a great job and the time and effort is appreciated =)

Hmmm...that may have been me, Emps...if so, sorry bout that. And yes, that with the links is bound to become a problem...sooner or later...

We really need to sit down and hatch out a plan, of how we wish to deal with this potential problem, don't you think?

WS: No worries - it was bound to happen (I'm suprised it hasn't happened more often - perhaps it has and I've just not noticed) esp. when there was such a big tidy up of things. I did try to get it back via archive.org and Google's cache but I had not luck there I'm afraid

I'm open to suggestions on potential fixes but until we can get the forum and FAQ working as a unit so that we could (somehow) stop things being deleted that are linked to from the FAQ the only solution I can see is that we try and archive every post as soon as is possible after it has been placed in the FAQ. Active threads are often added and I tend to leave things a month or so before archiving it to give people a chance to reply to it. To stop us loosing important posts we are going to have to have more people keeping a more active eye on the FAQ and archiving any threads that are still active. There is a node for people to add thread links that need archiving but to the best of my knowledge this has never been used so.........

Anyway thoughts?

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Emps

FAQs: Emperor

OK I've had a quick chat with TP and he is working on something that might help a little

More later............

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Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Couldn't you simply tie in a recusive FAQ check for the specific link when you are deleting an article? I would assume the runtime to be pretty darn fast, and if it is running on the same server, it should only eat up some clock cycles and leave the bandwidth alone.

for some reason I thought that more recently the Doc started to purge stuff?

                                     

Well, Emps, wouldn't it be possible to create a FAQ Archiv? Then, one could Archiv the appropriate threads (that had been bookmarked in the FAQ) there...allowing one to re-build the links, when deleting/archiving? One could then move the appropriate thread to the FAQ Archiv...and then delete it from the other forums...

Just a thought...

The Doc does a purge of everything that hasn't had a post for at least 30 days in the Ozone forum at the start of every month...I think...

ok, guys, we now have a solution. Kind of.

Visit the Faq-to-asylum-links page.

It gives you two lists.
One with lrinks in the FAQ to active threads in the Asylum.
The other one listing all threads that are linked, but can't be found anymore. (they're possibly archived, or even deleted).

(please don't call it 20 times in a row. It put's a bit of stress on the server (just look how much time he needs to compile that list)).

So now, we can go, and find those missing articles.
Your's,
Tyberius Prime

WS: You asked if there was a way to help with the FAQ and, although TP and I will be keeping an eye on the list, your sterling work archiving things here would combine nicely with monitoring that

TP: Good stuff

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Emps

FAQs: Emperor

See this too:
www.ozoneasylum.com/Forum3/HTML/002940.html

Some of the FAQs have been rendered useless by missing threads

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Emps

FAQs: Emperor