vote! Important Poll - Please Participate

[LHookins 3,113]

Please keep in mind that "archiving" means "deleting" in this context. Yes, it fooled me, too.

 

(which means that for all intents and purposes, archived messages become unavailable to you)

 

Hook

[Taipan 30]

I think keep the data available. As I became more and more hungry for info on FSX the available history of "gold nuggets" at avsim forums was one of the reasons I registered, and ultimately switched over to Avsim as my main forum of choice.

 

Avsim is at a crossroads, there is a chance here to preserve some major flight simulation history and knowledge for future users.

[mgh 89]

which means that for all intents and purposes, archived messages become unavailable to you

Please keep in mind that "archiving" means "deleting" in this context. Yes, it fooled me, too.

 

 

 

Hook

 

And me too. If it's not available to us what's the point in "archiving" it?

[kama2004 74]

Agree that a lot of older thread contains invaluable information.

 

I also support the idea of a read only reference.

 

Pierre

[tonywob 4,770]

Lots of old posts on here which always come up on Google and contain the exact information I'm looking for. I think popular old posts that still get regular hits should not be archived, and old posts which simply rarely get read archived. I'm sure that way it would be possible to clean lots of old posts out that aren't used anymore, whilst keeping useful ones

[n4gix 4,955]

@Larry, as I was the one who cleaned up the "Tips and Tricks" forum, I really need to clear up some misconceptions. First, most of the older tips were merged into a single thread, which means they are still available for search and review, albeit no longer in separate threads.

 

As for those with dead links, if the post's only content was the dead link, there was no reason whatever to keep the post at all, as it simply cluttered up the forum with useless thread titles... :huh:

 

Furthermore, "Tips and Tricks" has been replaced by the "Tutorials" feature, which allows information to be better sorted into specific categories and sub-categories. As time allows I am copy/pasting the best of the threads from "Tips and Tricks" into the new "Tutorial" section of the site.

 

@Tom, with regards to the "Aircraft and Panel Design" forum, many of the older threads have not fared too well with the various conversions and migrations of the database. At some point around 2009 or thereabouts, threads are now indexed backwards, and most -if not all- of the C code and XML script examples are now missing entirely, having become just "empty space" in the post... :blush:

 

In some cases, by careful "quoting" of the post containing such script/code examples, I've been able to resurrect the critical information entirely, but unfortunately that isn't always successful. :ph34r:

 

Regarding your actual question, if the "archive" isn't searchable at all, then what is the actual purpose for the "archive?"

[LHookins 3,113]

First, most of the older tips were merged into a single thread, which means they are still available for search and review, albeit no longer in separate threads.

 

Thanks, Bill. I was so upset at the time that I couldn't bring myself to look.

 

if the "archive" isn't searchable at all, then what is the actual purpose for the "archive?"

 

Exactly!

 

The poll should be redone with an emphasis on the fact that posts may not be available. Perhaps have three sections:

 

Delete messages older than a certain date

Move messages older than a certain date to a separate forum that will be searchable and readable

Do not move or delete any messages

 

Delete messages older than 6 months

-etc-

Do not delete any messages

 

Move messages older than 6 months to a separate forum

-etc-

Do not move any messages

 

Hook

[momtchil 32]

Many of the old topics are still very valuable and have served many of us well. There is a lot of useful stuff I have found in old threads and posts to do with panels, gauges, scenery, FDEs, extreme variety of tweaking and fixes, freeware development, RW aviation, etc.... If possible I would like us to keep them all active and searchable for the community.

For that reason my vote was No for the archiving. If its possible to have a good on-line, public viewable and searchable archive for the old threads and posts - then that would be a viable alternative. I feel that to remove them all (even if its just removing them from public view) would be a great loss - we are a huge archive of information readily available to all and that is one of our biggest strengths.

 

 

Small EDIT (added text in brackets to last sentence above): 9:20pm 15/01/13

[Tom Allensworth 1,532]

I don't know where the presumption that archiving = deleting came from, but it is incorrect. We can "unarchive" topics as we deem necessary. That's the meaning of archive. There are about 40 different permutations of what we set as the criteria for archiving, not just age and to a lesser degree, how we select what we unarchive. I didn't go into all that detail in the poll because at its foundation, archiving is just that; ARCHIVING.

[vololiberista 205]

You should perhaps have an archive search option or allow access to Google and the like as does PPrune. i.e I sometimes do a Google search and up comes a PPrune archive list.

[HiFlyer 9,372]

I would like to find out what the costs to Avsim are (generally) to archive as opposed to not. Do all those messages cost more, for instance? Slow down the forum? Cause unsustainable overhead?

 

Is it just expensive, and if so, would you like donations?

 

Is there some sort of crunch coming where its important to decide this now?

 

Did it interfere with the recent attempt to update the forum?

 

Could an archive site or forum be set aside?

 

Should I shut up now?

[IFR7700 228]

Archiving without accessibility is senseless. You could write a book about virtually any flight sim subject simply by parusing the AVSIM databases. This is how research is done. Have all the material available, and let the individual gleen what may be needed for his/her purpose.

[LHookins 3,113]

I don't know where the presumption that archiving = deleting came from, but it is incorrect. We can "unarchive" topics as we deem necessary.

 

Even if the archives are available to you, if they aren't available to ME then archiving is functionally identical to deleting from my viewpoint. It won't matter to me if they're stored on an offline hard drive still connected to the server, reels of mag tape in the back of some warehouse under 10 years of tax receipts, or sent to /dev/nul. It's all the same for all members of Avsim and Google search too.

 

The key word is "access." If everyone can still access the archived posts, then all is good. If only certain admin members can access them, they're as good as deleted, even if they can be "restored from backup."

 

Hook

[mgh 89]

I don't know where the presumption that archiving = deleting came from,

 

Perhaps from here

 

archiving (which means that for all intents and purposes, archived messages become unavailable to you).

 

If they are unavailable to us then as far as we are concerned they are effectively deleted surely?

[Tom Allensworth 1,532]

Let me respond to a couple of points. But first, let me say that this topic and poll was opened to solicit opinions. Not to open the door for scourging of us or acting like you are being, or will be, deprived of something.

 

Archiving is just that. Archiving, as I said. When you go to the Library of Congress (here in the U.S.), and want to view a document from the archives, you ask for the document to be brought out. It is not on the library shelves, so to speak. That might be splitting hairs for some of you, but it certainly is not deleting or removing access entirely.

 

Is there a method, or methods, for you to access those archives without intervention or assist by AVSIM staff? I am looking into that.

 

It doesn't cost us any more in dollar terms to have a 2 GByte database or a 4 GByte database (today that is; if it continues to grow, we will have a real dollar cost to that larger database) and yes, we can archive off to another, less powerful computer that is not publicly accessed.

 

The real impact is in system performance. As any of you that deal with MySQL know, the larger the database, the more time it takes for the system to search, post to, read from, etc. Is the difference in performance significant? Not with the servers we are running today, but every little bit of system performance we can gain, the better it is for the average 800+ users that are in the forums at any given moment during the day. Right now we are seeing response times of just about 1 second with a server load that is not as low as we would like to see it. That's why the questions in the poll.

 

We're not the bad guys folks. We are asking for your opinions regarding over 2.2 million messages and what you think we should do with them, if anything. As we start our 17th year, the last thing we are going to do is delete anything.