History Slurping

Celebrim

Legend
A nerd forum I once upon a time was highly active on upgraded its forums recently (by which I mean, a few years ago, because it has been a while since I was active) and in the process dropped a lot of its historical threads, particularly those of the period I was active. As a result, poof, a lot of things I once wrote no longer exist even in the wayback machines, and that got me to thinking.

It occurs to me that I have no real assurance that six or sixteen years down the line the same thing would happen to me at EnWorld, as you never know what the future might bring.

Therefore, a feature I'd really like would be the ability to dump all my posts into a text file. Another forum that I'm active on and where I wrote some stuff I'm proud of has this and it provides a lot of peace of mind.

This is a feature I'd actually pay for if it was behind a paywall.

I could write a custom webcrawler that would slurp it out myself, but not only is that too much like my real work, but also it's the sort of thing which if you run it against a forum is a bit rude because of the potential server hit (especially if I'm not careful to sleep the threads often enough) so it wouldn't be my first choice.

Anyway, not something I'm expecting a big reaction to, but something to think about.
 

log in or register to remove this ad


Snarf Zagyg

Notorious Liquefactionist
Supporter
All of my comments here are but a walking shadow; a voiceless howl, that struts and frets briefly upon EnWorld, and then is heard no more: my posts are a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
 

FrogReaver

The most respectful and polite poster ever
Future me: 'i'm glad i downloaded all my enworld posts'
Future me after reading 1/1000th of them: 'the sheer volume of idiocy i produced probably deserves a spot in the record books'
Future me after reading 1/100th of them: 'it's depressing this is what I wasted so much of my life on'
 



FrogReaver

The most respectful and polite poster ever
The Pineapple in Me

A heartfelt story of reflection by @Snarf Zagyg detailing his realization that his irrational hatred of pineapples....

The alternate version - A Drama about trying to get a pineapple removed from his body using luck, ingenuity and hypnotic linguistical flare.

Or maybe the one led to the other... read to find out!
 


Snarf Zagyg

Notorious Liquefactionist
Supporter
What is going on here? I check back on this thread, and I'm just catchin' strays. ;)

giphy.gif
 

delericho

Legend
Wasn't there a great server crash a few years ago (well, a decade and a half ago), in which a vast chunk of our collective history was lost?
 

Remove ads

Top