Some cosmetic changes

[Brad R. Torgersen]

You will notice the rearranging of the deck chairs on the good ship.

Other than splitting out the writing and business sections, I've also set up some auto-pruning to get rid of threads that have been dead for longer than a year.

[MontyApollo]

I've also set up some auto-pruning to get rid of threads that have been dead for longer than a year.

I just noticed the part about deleting the older threads and saw that most everything prior to 2011 is gone. Is that all permamently gone?

I think some of those older threads still maybe had interesting and useful information in them even though they were no longer active. Some of it was just interesting to see the history of the forum.

[Strycher]

I've also set up some auto-pruning to get rid of threads that have been dead for longer than a year.

I just noticed the part about deleting the older threads and saw that most everything prior to 2011 is gone. Is that all permamently gone?

I think some of those older threads still maybe had interesting and useful information in them even though they were no longer active. Some of it was just interesting to see the history of the forum.

I tend to agree. I'm assuming that there were space issues or something that necessitated their getting cut. Brad?

[soulmirror]

I'd doubleplus agree with seeing the VALUE of "old" threads!

2011 and pre-2011 isn't old ... it's a reference of a goldmine where anyone NEW coming to the contest can probably find alot of questions explored and answered! Invaluable stuff!



Forums go through different eras, and to be honest older voices and conversations still have insights and inspirations to offer ... especially since many of the older previous winners and forumites "move on" ...

It's nice to still have access to their thoughts, when winners were here crafting their eventual wins (or someone like you, Brad, were sowing the seeds of a big career, and we all got to look on and sometimes share!)

Just my two cents, I guess ...

[Martin L. Shoemaker]

You will notice the rearranging of the deck chairs on the good ship.

Other than splitting out the writing and business sections, I've also set up some auto-pruning to get rid of threads that have been dead for longer than a year.

Ah! Then I must away to The Thread That Never Ends, so that it shall remain immortal!

[Brad R. Torgersen]

Yes, those old threads are gone for good. What I've noticed (having been here since 2008) is that almost nobody goes back and recycles a thread once it's been pushed too far into the past, thus questions and information tend to duplicate. As new threads are created to disseminate or talk about the same kind of info that was previously put. But nobody sees it because it's five or six pages deep into the history of any given subforum.

So . . . I decided to turn on thread pruning. But only in two subforums: the writing/craft subforum,and the Contest chatter forum. Only very old, untouched, never-viewed stuff gets pruned. If you post and/or view stuff on a semi-regular basis, the software sees this and the thread won't get pruned.

[MontyApollo]

I guess it doesn't really matter now, but I do think there was more value in those older threads than what you gave them credit for. This forum does have a search function, so it didn't really matter how deeply buried the threads were.

It does appear though that some of the threads I have viewed in past are gone. Just off the top of my head, I remember the thread where I believe it was Brennan Harvey (though don't quote me, I can no longer look it up to make sure) went on a rant about how he would never post to Baen's Bar because he didn't want to be "verbally raped," and Sam Hidaka posted some comments in response. I know that I viewed that thread at least twice or so within last year and a half, but I can't seem to find it any longer using search (though maybe I just missed it.)

I guess it just seems strange to me to delete big chunks of a forum. I'm not that well versed, but I'm not aware of any other forums that have deleted their history. Some technology forums I have gone to still have posts from the 1990s.

[soulmirror]

I wax, I wax philosophical until I melt; I pine, I pine like a squirrel has me by my cones.

So ... some of our thoughts, and some of our writings are now dust in the wind. I guess my sense of loss is over that philosophically. Realistically it happens to us all, I guess.

For what it's worth, if some of Brennan Harvey's "rants" did in fact get lost forever (and I only mention it because the phrase "Brennan Harvey rants" is already here, so I'll elucidate) ...

I think both he and I got tossed off the forum for a while during that era, if not due to it then during it.

The young Earth and the Jung forum was a world of fire erupting from the deeps, and great reptilian beings tore at each other with red fang and nail. Asteroids painted the heavens in their passing overhead, until one day one did not pass overhead, but touched the Earth and changed it forever. Mice and simians beheld the dust and shook it from their fur. They rose in the middle of the night and feverishly jotted down their dream ... and arising the next day read it and found only gibberish. And one day the gibberish itself was lost.

But when i spoke a little with Brennan in person at the contest awards ... what a wonderful guy, how did we get tossed off the forum? I thought (though I can't recall if it was due to our frictions, or only during them etc. ) So I'd hate for anyone new reading it to think "Brennan Harvey rants" reflects the man? is all I'd say.

There was fire, then, in the early eras. I note it, for history's sake, knowing that even saying that point of history means the history too will be lost again one day.

I hope future IOTF'ers coming here can always somehow find that ILLUSTRATORS too had and have a resource here too.

I hope the auto-deleters spare the chicken tracks writ in clay, whether folks read them much or not today.

I know we've never been half the forum (and that's no one's responsibility but the ILLUSTRATORS, who come here in fewer numbers, and write here less ... for various reasons, but they could be as free and as many as the WOTF's writers here, it's only up to them) ... but we're still half the contest.

But then, we should all write our greater stoof elsewhere anyway, yes? If all of our spirit is writ down here, where the moth corrupts, then it is not poured into the starry sky for all to see overhead. Let our dust be bourne in the wind, and not lay down with the mouse whose fur never released it to the world.

[Ishmael]

There are problems with the lack of an archive in the digital age. The guy who set fire to the Library of Alexandria may also have said to himself, "These books are really old and no-one reads them any more."

When the day comes for the history of science fiction to be written, will they call the noughties 'The Dark Ages'?

Yet at the same time I appreciate that current discussions do need to be separated from archives somehow if the whole system is not to become unmanageable and collapse under its own weight. It cannot be beyond the wit of man to have both. Or can it? I don't know; I just try to write stories.

[s_c_baker]

There are problems with the lack of an archive in the digital age.

...

When the day comes for the history of science fiction to be written, will they call the noughties 'The Dark Ages'?

This is actually a real thing in library studies, although I can't remember the name off the top of my head.

[Martin L. Shoemaker]

There are problems with the lack of an archive in the digital age.

...

When the day comes for the history of science fiction to be written, will they call the noughties 'The Dark Ages'?

This is actually a real thing in library studies, although I can't remember the name off the top of my head.

Alexandrosis?

[soulmirror]

They'll call it "The Bookworm" ... the virus that ate up all the science fiction that existed only on the internet, ate it out from the core. Only the sci-fi printed on yellowing paper will remain. We'll be back to Ant Men on the Moon and Sphia Loren-looking babes in armor being abducted by robots.

It's okay. I liked it when Mars was inhabitted.