http://web.archive.org/web/*/boards.straightdope.com/sdmb
What’s the reason for this? Is it a question of the Wayback Machine using too much server time? Or does this file affect other things, too, like evil hamster-hunting spam-bots or Google’s webcrawler or something?
Of all the storehouses of knowledge to be lost to the mists of time, I’d hate to see the SDMB lost…
Is there an efficient way to make a personal archive? Efficient as in my comp does all the work instead of me.
It could be because crawlers would increase traffic on an already heavily-brdened Web site. The ratio of members to guests to search engine crawlers using the forum on my site at any given time is usually about 1:1:1. Right now, there’s 132 users in my forum; 29 members, 79 guests, and 24 Yahoo bots.
I’ve been wondering the same thing. I’d hope it wouldn’t tax the Board server too much. I’d even wondered about saving every page I read to a disk.
There was an idea once floated that the Reader could seel CD copies of the board - especially if the board were taken offline. I’d be all over that.
Note to mods: I don’t intend to try archiving the board or anything until I know it’s not a problem (re: server load / copyright, etc.). (I don’t have the skill or resources, anyway.)
My guess is that it was done purely to cut the load on an already taxed server.
I don’t know if that will change now that we’re on another server. Probably not, as the Reader is paying for the privilege and would naturally want to limit their costs as much as possible.
I’ll see what I can find out about the subject.
I agree with you that there is some archival value in the board; I’ve long advocated some sort of read-only archives for all but the most recent stuff. However, vB doesn’t allow you to do that. Not sure how this will be handled.
While each of you that makes posts has copyright over your own postings, the Reader does hold the right to use such posts as they see fit, which includes archiving. Any attempt to benefit commercially from all posts (not just your own) would mean you would need to get copyright permission from the Reader and from everyone else that made a posting that you reproduced. What you might do personally, for your own use, for no profit, that’s your business.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
Just saw this and wanted to check. Since we have copyright over our own posts, what we might do personally, for our own use, for profit … our business, yours, or both?
You can do anything you like with posts you wrote yourself. If you can sell them for a million bucks, we’d appreciate your buying a couple rounds for the house and maybe giving us a ride in your new car, but that’s strictly up to you. On the other hand, if you want to republish or otherwise make use of an entire thread in which your post appears, you would at minimum have to get written permission from the Chicago Reader, Inc., or alternatively from each contributor to the thread.
Thanks for the reply. And Ed, if I get a million dollars, I’ll come down to Chicago (or wherever you might be) and give you a ride in my new car and buy you drinks.
Cause I’m a nice guy, of course. Anyone else who wants to be called Ed, well, I suppose you’re invited too!