Subject Re: [firebird-support] Re: Mailing list change?
Author River~~
Post date 2018-08-11T08:02:56Z
How much does that archive matter?


In my opinion if the archive matters at all needs to be kept in a backup held offline by the owners or a designated mod.

To rely on the big cyber company to do backups is tempting but sooner or later something will happen to one of them and groups without their own local backups will lose their history. The ts and cs warn you that no liability blah blah.

To rely on a big company to continue to provide working API is also taking a risk. If for example the provider went bust, the API is unlikely to be a priority for the bankruptcy administration people.

To expect a company we have left to hold the archive for a few months is readonable: for a few years perhaps; for ever and ever: No.

As the archive is visible without logging in (e.g. visible by the Googlebot) it would be straightforward to wget everything as a zillion html files, and then to top up every so often, preferably automatically. 

The top ups could be further wgets in a cron job, but for immediate convenience the archive machine could subscribe and then archive the emails as they arrive 

These can be kept compressed but no further processing than that. 

We are considering an unlikely event here, and the question of what format to use to restore from can be left to when/if it is needed. If we have the data in a known format (or two formats html and email) then it can be transmogrified when needed.

If we don't have the data in our possession we are risking losing the archive. How much does that archive matter?

This applies equally to Google FB Yahoo and all the other cybergiants. It applies independently of whether the list moved platform at some point or stays where it is

I am always surprised at how willing we collectively are to trust big cyber. 

R~~


On Sat, 11 Aug 2018, 08:29 Mark Rotteveel mark@... [firebird-support], <firebird-support@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
 

On 10-8-2018 21:10, blackfalconsoftware@... [firebird-support]
wrote:

Interestingly, the message by Doug you are replying to has yet to show
up in my mailbox. I wonder if it ever will.

> I am not sure what you mean by a non-web forum unless you are talking
> about the older bulletin board format.

Most people use this list as a mailing list (as in: they receive
everything by email and reply by email), not as a web discussion forum.

> To your other concern, I have come across quite a few sites offering
> free forums.  However, before investing in one, it would have to be
> researched as to the capability to support the requirements of the
> current Firebird forums.

The project has switched to Google Groups for some of the other mailing
lists. Google Groups can be used both as a web client and as a mailing
list similar as Yahoo Groups, except it is - in my opinion - better
maintained.

> Another concern is the consideration of moving the current forum's data
> into a new forum's format.

Migrating the archive to a new platform is in my opinion not a
requirement. We will however need to preserve that archive in some form.
That way, old discussions etc can still be found in search engines like
Google.

Mark
--
Mark Rotteveel