That's right-
Don't blame the IT Guy!
I suppose everyone missed the part about Dave successfully transferring our data from Groupee to here, especially the part about
that had never been done successfully before.
Dave and I both get a little frustrated when this comes up.
I realize this explanation is a little long:
Post Counts LOST ! ! -- Post Counts LOST !
but it has been on constant display for 3 years and 26 days as I type this, here-
Announcements & Rules
as you have pointed out already, the damage was done prior to the forum software migration. But the point remains, there was a diminishment of the "collective value" of member contributions -- regardless of who is to blame -- and neither the present or previous owner had the foresight to archive data rather than delete it.
I was going to type out the long and detailed story of just what a difficult and worrisome time buying this board was.
Instead, I'll just go with the abridged version.
I was offered the board in a phone call. I had to commit
at that moment, or parabellum, the former owner threatened to:
"shut it down, delete the content, and close the Groupee account to get this monkey off my back."
He was fed up.
So, I bought it.
I instantly changed the tone and The Rules to shut down the "Wild West" and change this board to one of the most civil on the net. The pushback and complaining were heavy and constant.
There was NO Moderator staff left in place when I took over. I also had to deal with burying my only sibling the first week I owned the board after a 5 week illness.
I'm not a computer or IT guy. I had 15 minutes of instruction the day I took over. I learned by examining the controls and through trial and error. The following 6 months are just a blur of 14-18 hour days of stress, work, and outgoing cash. For about 2 years, being self employed allowed me to devote the majority of my time to this board. It also allowed me to incur nearly $200,000 in debt between the actual expenses/purchase and loss of income over those two years.
So, YES, I pruned content for a 4 month period (out of the total 12+ years) till we could get it moved to a more economical host. In case you care, the exorbitant hosting fee I was paying would go up by 91% when the total posts reached 275,001.
NO pruning or deleting has been done since the move in June, 09, and no content of any value will ever be pruned again.
ETA- the 250,000 or less posts that we moved now number 1,900,084 as of this moment.
Foresight?
Pal, if I had
foresight, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
This board wouldn't be here.
I would not have given years of my time and most of a gun and grip collection to save this board and put up with your (and similar) whining and armchair quarterbacking.
So, here we are, at where we are today.
I'd suggest just getting over it, and moving forward from here.
Or, you could go moan to parabellum about all the valuable data he deleted. He is readily available on the Sig forum.
SIGforum.com --A discussion forum for SIG enthusiasts
Lemme know how that goes.
Or, you can put
YOUR money where your mouth is, and trot on over to
Internet Archive Wayback Machine and get all that data into a form we can upload into an archive cheaply and easily and we'll be glad to do it.
Get with Dave on that. He's the IT Guy. I can't fix much.
Don't feel obligated to respond.
I don't really care if you ever share your vast knowledge here again.
There.
That was cathartic.
I needed that.
