While our history is important it has become expensive baggage. I think ideally we need to transform into something Doug's server can handle.

We could spare a few decades of snide political comment. To survive we need to streamline, modernize, downsize and outsource. We need to change our overall data footprint before it drives us to extinction.

We need to change.

Perhaps into something we'd be proud to invite our friends to...even friends we sometimes disagree with.

Discuss...?

Absolutely. Thanks for the idea.

Doug

Can we please just archive the historic stuff instead of deleting it?
Believe it or not I happen to have about 140 TB of extra storage, in the form of a bunch of bookshelves chock full of idled hard drives representing most of my
work over a forty year period.
I'm SURE I could dig up at least 8 terabytes to spare.

Yes, not joking, I digitized something like 2500 analog videotapes and used as little compression as possible, burned out THREE used Sony U-matic VTR's
in the process. Used to be you could get a decent used one for under fifty bucks, now they are going back up in price again because
the old professional analog video decks are becoming rare...so if I ever want to do more, I'll have to drag a broken machine in for repairs instead.

How many terabytes IS the entire CHB-RR post database?
I can't imagine it being much more than 4 terabytes, am I wrong?

Jeffery, I'm all in favor of archiving if possible, though I can't imagine anyone would ever have any use for old political rants.

My goal is to keep us online with as little fuss and expense as possible.

Most of the work is going to fall on Doug's shoulders. He's a busy man and I don't want to ask too much of him.

As with all things I prefer to look to the future rather than live in the past.

Topping our current list of "popular topics" is Martha's book thread. She's been dead for over ten years and no one has used that forum for years. Looking over the forums I see that one hasn't had an entry since 2013.

It's time to shuffle sh*t around and create a new board that serves our needs and stays within our limited budget.

I disagree on a couple of things...sorry.
One of the problems with the board as it is now is that it's very difficult to search the archives but the main thing is, I disagree that "no one has any use for old political rants", because
in many cases, they are not rants.
I value just about every single word ever uttered here.
We have enjoyed some of the wisest political minds in this place, and I say that based on a rather vast amount of experience elsewhere.
It's not that I think EVERYTHING written here is gold, but let's just say that the ORE is dense and rich, and should be preserved for the day when refining that ore becomes easier.

In other words, I cannot imagine just throwing away nearly thirty years of conversations, much of which is incredibly valuable.
Maybe there hasn't been an entry on Martha's book page since 2013 because everything that needed to be said was said already.
The last entry in the "Trump's Trumpet" thread was by Golem on Tuesday Nov 08 2016 at 11:58 AM and that thread has enjoyed 3,690,499 views.

All I am asking for is a chance to ARCHIVE that stuff...it doesn't HAVE to be directly accessible here, but archives can be linked to.
And I will cheerfully donate a large hard drive for that purpose.

I'm glad you at least agree that we CAN preserve in some way.
For me, the big question is: What is the total size of the entire message database altogether?

I think that old newspapers should be archived too. But that doesn't mean paying rent to store moldering old newsprint.

If you've got available storage and would be willing to become our official archivist then you can try to work out the details with Doug.

Beyond that, it's entirely up to him how he manages to fit this square peg of a message board into the round hole that's available for it.

Yeah I'd be glad to store the archives, I managed to not only store but RESTORE a set of 50 year old damaged videotapes and
I still have material on hard drives that dated all the way back to 1993...new drives, because I migrated it off old drives when they began
to show their age.

Maybe I wasn't making myself clear enough...I am not saying that every post dating to the beginning must remain on a new server or
be accessible at the hosting company. I am saying that valuable materials are important, important enough that companies like Iron
Mountain are doing brisk business.

And I am saying that since everything is mostly text here at The Rant, the entire archive is probably not more than a few terabytes and
storage of that size is a trifle for a video editor because we live our daily lives in TB's...always have.
The movie "Toy Story" had a "camera" negative footprint of one terabyte and that was back in 1995 when a terabyte of data was
considered almost unimaginable and they were compressing the Hell out of the data to save space.
Toy Story 4 used up over FIFTY terabytes.

I bet the entire posting database all the way back to 1994 might total 4TB max and I'd be surprised if it's even that large.

Going back over the records, I have found we archived old posts after hitting a million posts. That seemed to be a point where the board slowed down to a crawl.

The last archive of old posts came in 2007 and this is where we stand now after archiving all posts over 100,000.

Forum Statistics
Total Forums 61
Total Topics 17293
Total Posts 314541

That is still a good number of posts, given the slowdown of bulletin boards in the social media era. Before 2007, however, we were hitting a million posts in about five years.

Maybe one idea would be to take a look at topics that have virtually no post in recent months or years as a possible way to downsize. It's not my call. The members and moderators should make the decision.

Doug

Getting the moderators together is like herding cats. They've mostly moved to other forums and only do occasional drive-by posting here these days.

I've sent Jon an email requesting he put in an appearance here and Jeffery is aware of the situation.

Other members and lurkers are certainly welcome to enter this discussion.

A lot is on the chopping block and time is short.

I'm going to start looking things over and deleting topics. For now it will be just garbage and I'll avoid Topics of any substance. I think I may need admin status to futz around with the forums but that needs re-organizing too.

As is my preference as a moderator, I will keep everything upfront and everyone informed.

I was having a conversation with a friend about setting up a server to host the archives. I have a few retired computers and numerous drives, as well as high speed unlimited internet. I don't see much difficulty in merging an active server with an archive server, privately managed.

I think the first order of business is identifying the data footprint of the current archives- how many terabytes? - and then finding a location for it.

I haven't managed anything as large as Reader Rant, ever, and haven't been a "techie" for - I checked - 22 years (when I managed a private website). I've been building a family website and it reminded me of how much I've forgotten and how much has changed since the turn of the century.

Here's a possible method. Pick a date - I recommend 3 years - and close those posts and archive them. Anything newer than that, we keep on the "active" server. That should be a fairly simple sort and we can archive the old stuff on a private server.

And I'd be happy to help archive or contribute the hardware needed to do the archiving.
An extra 13 terabytes is something highly doable.

It's really a trip through memory lane to go back into the files. Our files go back to 2007 when Doug last archived us. It's hard to tell how much of it is actually accessible and how much has been corrupted. There are probably hundreds of threads with nothing but a dead link and no replies, threads that were merged with other threads and no longer exist.

I'll do whatever I can do from here but I'm pretty much dumb as a post when it comes to technical sh*t.

From a sentimental perspective, it would be nice to be able to review posts from the past from the various forums. I know I wrote one circa 2005/06 regarding PNAC. It was so good that I found it on another website with someone else’s name on it.

I still have PMs from Ranters long forgotten to most here. I keep the PMs for sentimental reasons.

Ps. We’ve has some awesome daily RTs in the past that would be quite nice to see again…if only to determine how well those thoughts/predictions have aged.

Being the oldest comment site on the net is historical actually. Perhaps partnering with a University is an option?

Despite all we may do, this little footnote in history will eventually come to an end.

Roadkill on the information highway.

I just want to keep it here for those of us who use it for as long as possible. I don't really care about preserving the files.

Enzo Ferrari once said..."What's behind you doesn't matter."

What matters to me is the road ahead.

Start contacting Universities, Rick, and see if you can drum up interest! Jeffery and Jon are soon going to be archiving everything worth saving.

If there are things you want to download from here for your personal files, this would be a good time. Because when it next comes time to move it's mostly getting deleted.

As a general proposition, hosting a server is not a particularly complicated thing. As I noted, the main thing is knowing how big the data footprint is. The structure is already there, so internal links should translate directly. I don't think there would be a great deal of strain on any server. All we would need is a link that points to the archive, wherever we decide to house it. Yes, there would be dreck that would be transported with it, but that is the price of doing business.

I agree that the main effort should be in maintaining the community that is Reader Rant as an active enterprise (looking ahead) and not having a break is imperative in that effort.

That sounds like a very workable idea...there can be an ARCHIVE section that points offsite from the main server.
And it WOULD be cheap because the amount of use by members would be minimal, like wandering into a reference library reading room to check out an old encyclopedia once every other month.
And yes, ancient discussion threads could be all locked so they are "read-only".
Just fix a hard bar on anything posted prior to the Obama administration years, for example, anything prior to 2008 or 2012 gets archived.
Does that sound reasonable?

Would the entire Reader Rant database from inception be archived?

It sounds positively brilliant and doable and everything we could have hoped for as a small but hopeful community trying to survive these difficult times. Perhaps one day the pre-2007 archives could be re-united with the rest.

I missed those heady days but I understand they were exciting!

Maybe I am being too hopeful but as Doug said, the POSTS only occupy a half a terabyte and, since it IS archival, it's not like anyone's
going to be chewing up massive bandwidth over it. It's good to have the archives as a reference, and if it's possible to get it "sub-hosted" on something
like a "free" WiX basic platform in read only mode, it won't be painful to do.

For the time being I do agree that there is a need to make a dividing line where the current hosting platform cuts off posts prior to....say perhaps
2008 or 2012 for the sake of a smaller footprint.

I'm only saying that there's an incredible amount of wisdom packed into those archives, so please don't just bin-chunk them.
I hope we can find a way to make that happen.

Nothing's getting chucked until the archiving efforts are complete and the next move is imminent.

The current host is too expensive and while we've kept the lights on for now we are not out of the woods. The monthly expense continues. At some point in the future, we can move a smaller, more nimble Rant to a cheaper home. Then Doug can apprise us of our new operating expenses and we can divide it among ourselves as we see fit.

I think all these years Doug paid our rent deserves enormous thanks and that we should pick up the tab from here on in. Ultimately, that will be the test of how long the Reader Rant community can stay alive.

Printing a copy off is great for the records but it isn't that data that makes the Rant what it is.

The Reader Rant archives pf the past are stored on hard drives I have and also in an offsite st of backups of the CHB that gp back to 1995. As memory serves, we lost some data in the late 119990 and early 2000 because of a hacker and some of RR was destroyed by a moderator who felt I had "betrayed the cause." She left and took some material with her. I never heard from her again.

The data is stored, primary, in MySQL database files I am trying to go back and did up what we have. We still have a storage room in Fairfax, VA, where a lot of this stuff is store.

Doug

Holy moly, first I ever heard about hackers and a rogue mod!!
Wow, I have to sit down for a moment. This is really serious. So sorry this happened.
I still stand ready to offer another large hard drive for you if you need it, happy to do whatever I can to help.

As I recall, we had to ditch a number of threads after the hack and because of a moderator who felt I betrayed the cause. She was a trusted administrator too, but then copied some material other to other discussion boards to list what she felt was my passage to the dark side. It was a sad time and I almost shut the board down over it, but others, like Phil Hoskins, stepped up and restored some order. Phil and I tangled more than a few times, but he came though, as several of you have in this latest crisis. Thank you. You have been more than I deserve.

I have some database experts who work at Virginia Tech, which is over in an adjoining county, who have volunteered to help examine the archive databases to see what may need to be done to make sure they are clean of any hacks and need any repairs. The three largest drives are up in Fairfax (a five-hour drive away) in Northern Virginia, and I will head up that way in the Spring to pick them up (and probably everything else still in that storage unit) to bring back to the mountains.

Jeff, your help could see how, and if, he archives can put in any form for reading or printing, along with whatever is deciding to do with what is currently on the forum.

We've got a lot or work ahead on this, and the help of all of you is both needed and appreciated. Thank you.

Doug

I found the oldest column of mine in the current RR listings. It was from January 2017 but had a lot of garbage in it:

[column]

January 20, 2017 | by DOUG THOMPSON - A CHB Opinion

In the four days leading up to Friday�s inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States of America, nearly 450,000 people chose to read a four-year-old story in Capitol Hill Blue about a number of Republicans who would not be attending the second inaugural of Barack Obama.

The article, written by Ken Thomas of The Associated Press, said Republicans, after losing the second straight Presidential election to Obama, weren�t in any mood to celebrate.

More than 100 Repubicans, including members of Congress, chose to attend an event in Las Vegas, called �Restore Our Future� or on vacation getaway or just �trips home� while Democrats flocked to Washington to celebrate another four years of Obama living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

�It�s a good time to lay low,� said John Feeheary, a former top Congressional aide and president of Quinn Gillespie Communications.

Someone found the article in the CHB archives and posted it on Twitter and Facebook as an answer to Republicans and Trump aides who claim Democrats who aren�t attending this year�s inauguration are somehow �unpatriotic.� [End of Clip}


A lof of posts lilke this were full of garbage characters, whmich usually suggests a change in the typeface filter that did ot work. Not sure, I will continuke digging and finding what I can and let everyone know what I find.

UBB changed a lot over the years and we had a lot of problems with MySQL and PhP with translateriongs of older posts updates. The changes could affect older archives as well. Let's hope not.

Doug

Cleaing-up old columns corrupted by software updates and making them look pretty again, will give the mods something to do.

wanna be a mod? I've got some files that need going through...about 17 THOUSAND of them.

Last year I moved from my home of 44 years in the swamp. I brought nothing with me.

That's my approach to memorabilia of all sorts.

Okay but that doesn't mean it has to be everyone else's approach, and all that's being asked is to preserve them, archive and make a plan
to have them accessible at least in read only mode in a separate location that is tailored to OCCASIONAL access.

That's not too much to ask, and hard drives are cheap and I will cheerfully help out with that cost.

I have 45 minutes of free time on the ferry twice a day.

I'm just a mod. I don't make any decisions.