The Proboards Forums

RedEastWood · May 23, 2021 at 1:07 PM

@wild1145#18443 Could we at least open it up to admins. We just want the nostalgia tbh

**wild1145** · May 23, 2021 at 1:09 PM

@redeastwood#18444 Unfortunately not, again see my previous post, the permissions are so badly broken that's not currently possible...

simplynick · May 23, 2021 at 1:44 PM

I think Im one of the few people who still have access to the proboards forums.

Hockeyfan360 · May 23, 2021 at 2:00 PM

I think it’s been brought up before, but I think it would be really, really fun to write a scraper that archived the entire forum. Entirely legal? Maybe not. We might need permission or we could just do it. I’d be willing to work with video to write a scraper and then organize the archives. This would be a really awesome way to recover our history and preserve it.

RedEastWood · May 23, 2021 at 3:46 PM

Quote

@wild1145#18443 It needs time when I've got the headspace to tackle it to work out how to get it to the stage we can then deal with the archiving and publishing of everything because right now I just have no way to easily do that with the state it's in.

Perhaps this is finally time for you to put genuine trust in your executive team to help you when you need it. You aren’t a lone staff member, you have help - use it. I’m sorry for the brusque nature of this but there are people who are genuinely itching to help out where needed.

**wild1145** · May 23, 2021 at 4:13 PM

@redeastwood#18458 It is not about trust in you, the execs or anyone else. It's working out how to untangle the mess in such a way that actually fits what I want to do with the proboards forums, and without 20 people all going off and doing their own thing.

Also forgive my scepticism, but the odds of people wanting to help out long term, are near zero. It's boring work going through every thread that isn't already on a public board and making sure there's nothing sensitive in there, or troubleshooting silly permissions issues. Like the dev team where people go "Yeah there are loads of people who could help with TFM" it'll be just another project that gets started, and never finished.

I'd rather get it done properly than do it half arsed, and right now that's all that would happen, because people think they want to help, and quickly decide they have better things to do with their lives.

If you also read the reply I made in full, I've already said I will be asking for help, but I'd like to have the time and headspace to come up with a clear plan of attack first rather than as I say, 20 people going and doing what they think is right, and none of it ending up being right.

DragonSlayer2189 · May 24, 2021 at 12:50 AM

@Hockeyfan360#18454 it would not comply with probords TOS iirc, but in the past, i made a bot which would scape all of a fourm users posts and like them (never actually got the like bit of it to work before abandoning the project due to it not being compliant with TOS, but all of the rest of it worked) i could, in theory modify the script to get the text from the post and then make a large sql database but with there being 68,101 posts, and god knows how many replies on each of those posts, i don't think i have the storage capacity for something like that

burger · May 24, 2021 at 1:01 AM

@simplynick#18452 Same here, can successfully log in and view the forum.

RedEastWood · May 24, 2021 at 11:52 AM

Could just give pro boards a ring and get some insight on how to fix this mess.

Fleek · May 24, 2021 at 12:04 PM

@redeastwood#18498 ProBoards was not designed to restore deleted forums, we are lucky that they were able to restore it. I do not believe there is a fix for it.

Xen · May 24, 2021 at 3:16 PM

@Fleek#18500 That still doesn’t mean we can’t contact them for support. If they can fix the issues, then great! If not, then it was worth a try.

May 24, 2021 at 5:03 PM

If no one is going to do it, then someone please fucking get Finest (who actually manages the forum) to do it.

I've been apart of the server's legacy for almost 9 years now. This forum has so many memories and is so valuable. I've been patient. But I'm starting to lose my patience. The forums can be so useful, for referencing past events, policies, etc. I don't give a damn whether the groups are fucked up or permissions - literally give everyone the same permissions except Ryan, Steven, and Finest and you'll be golden.

As someone who has previously been a Forum Admin, and someone who has done tons of administration on that forum, there really isn't nothing you should be hiding from the public. Show them the Recycle Bin and the buffoonery we have recycled. Show them the Forum Admin Lounge. There literally is nothing "confidential" on that forum. We show IPs on permanent ban requests now; that would be the only confidential thing I can think of, which is now disclosed to the public.

From hilarious suspensions to hilarious admin applications, all of the mistakes we have made - the forums literally show how we've changed over time. It's a part of my life. It shows me being 8 years old all the way to being 16. Please. This should be prioritized, and Ryan, for the love of god, if you cannot do it yourself, don't fucking let it "fall behind in your plans", let someone like Steven (who has literally offered his time), or Finest, to do it themselves.

Stop trying to brush this off. This is important.

Hockeyfan360 · May 25, 2021 at 5:49 PM

@DragonSlayer2189#18484 As long as you didn’t pull the media content (and only pulled the images for like profile pics+signatures), you’d probably be fine. All of Wikipedia in text form compressed is like 20GB. You can fit a LOT of text on a computer.

DragonSlayer2189 · May 25, 2021 at 8:13 PM

@Hockeyfan360#18629 i may see if i can just get the links to any media content on the page so that way i don't have to download anything, but idk

**StevenNL2000** · May 25, 2021 at 11:43 PM

@Hockeyfan360#18454 The problem is not that it's not entirely legal, but that they can detect it and ban our entire forum for violating the Terms of Service, which would put us in a far worse situation than we are in right now.

May 27, 2021 at 7:27 PM

Bump. I'm not letting this fall. This is an integral part of TF

Telesphoreo · June 26, 2021 at 2:24 AM

Bump. This is important, can we get any update on this? I'd like to access the ProBoards forums.

**wild1145** · July 3, 2021 at 5:17 PM

To provide a quick update as of this morning.

@"StevenNL2000"#2 has proposed an excellent way forward on how we can handle this without the need to try to involve Proboards (Which has been what I've been trying to work out). I'm hopeful that with the work Steven is currently doing we will be able to re-open the forums and make available in a read-only format any content which was historically available to OP's within the coming weeks.

Once that is complete we will look to work with some folks to go through all of the various staff boards and where possible move those threads to then also be publicly accessible, this will likely take a considerable amount of time but we should start to see things appearing in the coming months.

I apologies that this has taken so long, it's something that I've wanted to get right and I've struggled to see exactly the best way of doing it, the current plan might end up going to shit, but it's the best sounding plan yet, and given the community push to get access to some of this it feels like the best way to start to open content back up to the community.

Some things to note

Posting will be disabled, forum admins will be able to post and reply, but otherwise all of the boards and threads will be in read-only mode or locked depending on the permissions flexibility in Proboards.
Registration on the forums will remain disabled, I think a snapshot of the user list as it was at the time of it being archived feels like the right thing to do.
The shout box will also remain disabled for the time being as people can post in there, and given it was regularly cleared there's little we can save there anyway.

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wild1145 July 16, 2022 at 11:09 PM

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