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AngelAlice

AngelAlice

bemused & saddened observer
Joined
Apr 7, 2006
Messages
762
Guys - the old IHTM pages, where all the best and earliest stories were archives separately have simply vanished en masse. Every time you try to click on them you get a 'file not found' return.

Mods - consider what's at stake! These stories are an irreplaceably valuable resource; a store of urban myth and personal experience that needs to be preserved and archived carefully.You guys need to retrieve them ASAP. Can we get some reassurance it's being done?
 
Thanks ;) Looking at the styling of the page you kindly linked to, I bet those articles fell out of the database when the site was re-jigged at some point in the past - if that is the case, I suspect the only way to put them back would be to get those higher up than us to reinstate them (another chore to add to the never-ending list) which, I'm sorry to say. isn't likely to happen :(
 
I can only second Angel Alice's desire to see the original stories easily accessable. Readers shouldn't have to go through the internet archive to find the stories and they sometimes don't even appear there. I would personally love to be able to read through all the stories without having to copy the urls into the website each time. Pretty pretty please mods restore or back up all the old stories.
 
WhistlingJack said:
Thanks ;) Looking at the styling of the page you kindly linked to, I bet those articles fell out of the database when the site was re-jigged at some point in the past - if that is the case, I suspect the only way to put them back would be to get those higher up than us to reinstate them (another chore to add to the never-ending list) which, I'm sorry to say. isn't likely to happen :(
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Nooooo. It'd be a crime to let this stuff go, there is unique stuff there that demands preservation.

I'll happilly volunteer to contact anyone necessary, or do anything needed to help with getting this done. And I'm sure others will. The actual reinstatement would be very easy, because the entire html page can still be accessed through archive.org. But it probably should be done speedily while that source is still available.
 
However much we'd like to put those pages back, it's difficult because the site is in the hands of a hosting company, which means that getting anything changed at all isn't straightforward and so isn't even attempted unless something's badly wrong.

All I can suggest for the moment is that you copy the stories in question and post them as new 'IHTM' threads
shrug.gif
 
WhistlingJack said:
However much we'd like to put those pages back, it's difficult because the site is in the hands of a hosting company, which means that getting anything changed at all isn't straightforward and so isn't even attempted unless something's badly wrong.

All I can suggest for the moment is that you copy the stories in question and post them as new 'IHTM' threads
shrug.gif
Click to expand...

I guess as an interim that's better than nothing.

But I'm curious now about the arrangement for this site. What actually is hosting company? I assumed you just had webspace and a webmaster in the usual way.

Sorry for the hopeless inquisitiveness!
 
Further on the subject of reinstating the old stuff - could we create a subsection of IHTM called something like 'Classics' where we could deposit the retrieved material?
 
We at this end can't create subsections, I'm afraid, but you could give each retrieved thread the prefix of 'Classic', I suppose - go for it ;)
 
Gone are the days when we could set up sub-fora.

What we can do, however, is edit the OP in each thread to incorporate the retrieved text from the archive... now, this will take a long time. So, to this end, we'd greatly appreciate it if members could maybe pitch in and post to this thread, giving us any relevant links that they come across to both the thread on here and the corresponding IHTM in the archive site? We'll then marry them up, and delete the post containing the links when we've done so. I've already tested it with the Black Stick Man thread previously mentioned, and it worked fine.

How's that?
 
That's certainly a good interim fix Stuneville - my only worry is the stability of the archive.org pages. I don't know how long they will be maintained there. Does anyone?
 
AngelAlice said:
That's certainly a good interim fix Stuneville - my only worry is the stability of the archive.org pages. I don't know how long they will be maintained there. Does anyone?
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No. Hence, we'd better get on with it, eh?

C'mon folks, start flinging some urls at us :).
 
I've posted three stories with URLs - if we all pitch in it shouldn't take too long.
 
Excellent - once we have a few more we'll start matching them up and merging with the existing threads.

Thanks people - keep at it!
 
ramonmercado said:
Its a bit like an old Ealing film: everyone pulling together.
Click to expand...

Sounds like the plot to a porn film.
 
Well, we've posted a fair few now - so what next guys?

And will the other regulars be helping out? If we all just do one or two it won't take long, yeah?
 
OK, the ones that have been done are now prefixed with "CLASSIC ARCHIVE MERGED". Where the new post containing the full text as retrieved from the archive is on the same page as the opening post, I've just merged them and left the text be. Where the discussion is several pages long I've excised the text from the new post and edited the OP to include the full text.

Some are proving elusive - they may have been merged into other fora (I know, I know), titles scrambled about, etc - I will do some advanced searches when I have time. Meanwhile, keep em coming. It'll take time to reconcile everything that can be reconciled, but so long as we have the text retrieved to the relative safety of this forum we can do it at comparative leisure.

Thanks for all your efforts chaps and chappesses - keep at it :).
 
stuneville said:
What we can do, however, is edit the OP in each thread to incorporate the retrieved text from the archive... now, this will take a long time. So, to this end, we'd greatly appreciate it if members could maybe pitch in and post to this thread, giving us any relevant links that they come across to both the thread on here and the corresponding IHTM in the archive site? We'll then marry them up, and delete the post containing the links when we've done so. I've already tested it with the Black Stick Man thread previously mentioned, and it worked fine.
Click to expand...

Ahh. Now I see how we are supposed to do this.

Here's a classic.

And here is the OP you may now impregnate with the archived story.

Also, not realizing I was supposed to post the archives here, today I started two new threads that have both the archives and the original posts:

http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=35135

http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=35132

Thanks Stu, Angel, and everyone else for getting on this!

And thank you! All above merged - stu
 
No probs - I'm going to do another mass-merge later this week, so keep 'em coming.
 
OK - big merge a-coming on Monday night (I'll actually have the PC to myself for more than 14 minutes!) so get a few more in.
 
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