Tutorial for finding missing posts?

[Endur]

Go to Google, search for ENWorld and your thread title. You should find several links that were cached. Those cached pages are probably a bit out of date, but they are your best bet.

Those are high-level general instructions. I meant specifics.

i.e. I know how to use google cache to retrieve the first page of the thread from the cache. But what about specific pages beyond page 1, like page 17, etc. ? My thread had 1500+ posts in it and at least 500 are missing.

 

[Conaill]

Those are high-level general instructions. I meant specifics.

i.e. I know how to use google cache to retrieve the first page of the thread from the cache. But what about specific pages beyond page 1, like page 17, etc. ? My thread had 1500+ posts in it and at least 500 are missing.

Ok, here's the long version:

First of all, you want to narrow down your search to enworld pages, using either "site:www.enworld.org", or "site:enworld.cyberstreet.com" in the search (try both - they may have different pages cached).

Next, make sure to click the "repeat the search with the omitted results included" link at the bottom, if one appears - we want all of those slightly differnt versions.

You should now have a bunch of different links. Not all of these will actually be for the thread you're looking for. For example, some may be for the higher-level forum which merely lists the name of your thread. If you search wasn't specific enough, surround the thread title in quotes (make sure you have the *exact* name of the thread, though).

Now the fun part: where oh where is that page you're looking for? You could simply click on each of the cached pages in turn, and check (1) what page of the thread it links to, and (2) what the date is on the last post in there. Often though you can tell from the url what you're looking for. In particular, you want to look out for anything like this:

.../index.php/t-155697-p-3.html
.../showthread.php?t=155697&page=3
-> both of these indicate page 3 in thread #155697. Based on the pages I've been able to dig up so far today, it seems like Google may only cache up to page 10 like this

.../showthread.php?goto=lastpost&t=155697
.../showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=155697
-> these will typically contain the *last* page of the thread, and is your best bet for finding the most recent material.


Most of this stuff holds for the other search engines as well. Apart for Google, Yahoo Search has proven useful as well. MSN Search also has cached pages, but seems much more limited. I'd love to hear about other good search engines to use this trick on...

 

[Morrus]

I've never used it, but is the WayBack Machine at http://www.archive.org/ of any use?

 

[Bront]

www.enworld.org reveals nothing after mid 2005, if that's any indication of how usefull the wayback machine is.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

I checked Morrus' archive link; entering www.enworld.org got me cached info of the site's homepage up to April 1, 2005.

I'm specifically looking for two pbp threads that I DM. For the first thread, I would like the first page and the second page (if possible). The first thread is titled "CB's City of the Spider Queen v3.5" and the second thread is titled "CB's The Sunless Citadel v3.5." I have everyone's character sheets downloaded for both games on my own hard drive. I would very much like to recover any or all of the other two missing IC threads.

I've tried the google cache method. It could be that I'm not doing it correctly, but while I'm able to find a blueprint of the Playing the Game index from the day that the site crashed, I cannot call up either of my threads...google returns the message "No thread specified. If you followed a valid link contact the webmaster." Am a bit heartbroken that our descriptive text may have been lost for that game, but I imagine others may also feel similarly. If anyone is willing and able to point out where I may have gone wrong in my attempt to use google's cache to recover the info I'm seeking, I would be very thankful for the kind help.

Sunless Citadel OOC, page 1
Sunless Citadel IC, pp 1, 5
City of the Spider Queen OOC, pp 1,2,4
City of the Spider Queen IC, page 1

Thank you to my players for recovering much of what has been found. If I can help anyone find their info, please let me know.

 

[Conaill]

I've tried the google cache method. It could be that I'm not doing it correctly, but while I'm able to find a blueprint of the Playing the Game index from the day that the site crashed, I cannot call up either of my threads...google returns the message "No thread specified. If you followed a valid link contact the webmaster."

Make sure you click on the link titled "Cached" at the bottom of each search result, *not* on the link for the page itself. The latter is just a link to the now-missing page, and will indeed return that "No thread specified" error message from the enworld forum software.

The cached page is a copy of the old page that Google stores locally (well, "locally" from Google's perspective anyway - i.e. in some big "cache" database somewhere in Google headquarters). They do this because accessing a locally stored copy of the page is much faster for the search software than accessing the original page online.

The cached copies of the page do expire eventually and/or get overwritten when Google stores a more recent copy of the page (e.g. after it notices the content of the page has been changed), so time is of the essence here...

 

[CanadienneBacon]

Thanks. The players in those games and I had earlier managed to recover about seven pages' worth of cached material using precisely the method you mention here. I think the rest of it is gone, pure and simple. :\

C'est la vie. It was quite a bit of work that we'd put in on descriptive text but nuttin to do 'bout that now. As much as it hurts to loose all that for a pbp I'm sure it would've made me cringe even harder had it been for a storyhour.

 

[Nyaricus]

Sorry to pest again, but I found the name of a thread of mine which I *really* would like back, and I was wondering if anyone knew how to get to a catched version of it.

Nyaricus' new Campaign Races: balance issues and feedback appreciated!


is the name, but google won't let me see it - http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache...yaricus&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=121&lr=lang_en is the farthest I can go - you can see number 9421 has the same name, but I can't access the page - it just doesn't load. Does anyone know if I can still get this?

 

[CanadienneBacon]

I googled and found your thread but when I click on the Cache (which is what I did to recover what of mine I could), I was sent to the EN World archives and even though I spotted your thread title down a bit on the page that popped up, it of course would not let me open it...same problem as what you experienced. When I was googling the other day to try to recover some of my own lost info, one or two of my things came up in that same archive style and, just as they did with yours, I was unable to open and view the material. I'm no techie and couldn't figure out what to do with it, so I went with the assumption that because the db was corrupted the archived material from that time period was also lost.

Just thought I'd let you know that I tried and did have a look but to no avail. Maybe someone else with a more informed knowledge and skill set will come along with some pointers.

I checked Yahoo's search engine to see if they had a cache of that thread (they did not), but I was able to locate the thread topic number, which may be of some help in a further search elsewhere:

www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=170572

That's the thread topic number before the db crashed. If it helps you, then fantastic...I kind of don't think it will but ya never know.

 

[Nyaricus]

CanadienneBacon, thanks so much for at least trying to find my old post. I am also no techie, but if your info does help then great Again, I really appreciate the try, even if nothing came of it (yet )

BTW, nice name I'm from the 'Peg - where are you from?