Preserved Topic: Long term storage of the Asylum (Page 1 of 1)

Perhaps I've not kept up with events on the business end of the Asylum, but I was just wondering...

Does the Asylum retain all data from the forum indefinitely?

If not, why not, and how often is it purged?

If so, what happened?

No, the Asylum doesn't retain all data from the forum indefinitely in order to save web space. What topics should be archived and what topics should be deleted is up to Mad Scientists (since Mad Scientists do the archiving / deleting). Also, when archiving / deleting should be done is up to Mad Scientists, too.

The Doc tends to frown on topics being deleted though. I try never to delete topics, but I archieve my share.


.sig by Weadah.

This is an unfortunate thing. I can understand, though, since the database doesn't seem to generate much revenue to justify buying hard drives for it. However, in the age of non-permanence online, forums such as this represent an easy-to-reference archive. Perhaps much of the content at the Asylum may not be of use ten years from now, but it would be nice if we had that option.

i can understand the webspace problem, but i also want that all things said should be archieved. sometimes i have been searching old threads and finally found out, that it has been completely deleted.

Yah, as things stand now, I tend to do mass deletes of things in the 30-60 day old category (as in, no action within that time.) I'll usually look through the list of things about to get the axe, and if they were good topics I let 'em live for a while. The MS's will archive things along the way, one good way of wasting an afternoon is to dig through the tail end of a forum, looking for things to archive. Those things that don't get adrchived and don't catch my eye during the purge, well, they're gone forever. The asylum usually squats on top of about 100-150MB all by itself, even more bloated than the main OZONE site, which only needs 94MB for the whole works. The only possible way I could afford to archive things forever would be to buy my own server and co-locate it somewhere (I have good bandwidth at home, but not sufficient for running this site, we generate a lot of traffic!) I'd need a decent unix server with a fast buss and some killer fast SCSI drives, the whole setup, with the ton of RAM and drives included would run a few thousands, and the co-location costs would be nothing to sneeze at either! (My bandwidth and hosting costs run maybe $3-4k/year, and you may not have noticed, but I don't make any money off of this, this is my hobby! =)

Ooh, I *wish* I hadn't started thinking about how much I spend on all this jazz, it can get depressing!

On a high note, I just bought some new toys for home, 3-256MB chips for about $100/each, and a 76.8 gig IBM hard drive, 7200rpm, woo! I also bought a new processor for my antiquated Celeron 533 Mhz, bumping it to 850 Mhz, should help.

On another side note, I used to date this girl who was a photographer, and she made *my* hobby look cheap! Steve, you know what I mean, how much for a used 2-1/4" back, eh? (Forget about lenses, you can't *afford* lenses!)

(In case anyone is worrying about me and my money, please don't. I actually *like* spending on this thing, and I use my name as a club to get good deals, heh.)

Your pal, -doc-

I'm hearing you