What does [Archive] mean?

About This Message Board
1

I finally discovered this post listing many ways to use Google to search the SDMB (wow! thanks alterego!) So what do I do with my newfound power? Search all my old posts, naturally (what a delightful exercise by the way, esp. seeing old opinions I’ve changed over the years - yes I am growing as a person!)

My question is: Google lists its search results using the thread title. Some of these titles have [Archive] appended to them. If I open one these results I get a differently formatted view of the thread (with a link at the top labelled “View full version” that takes you to the actual thread properly formatted)

For example: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-341410.html

What puzzles me is there are there are unarchived threads older than some archived ones. Is this just some artifact of using Google search, or are some threads archived while others are not? If so, what’s the selection criteria?

2

It’s a listing of postings in the system automatically generated by vB.

We’ve never paid a lot of attention to this – didn’t seem like a very useful function to us – but I think I’ll go look deeper and see what’s up.

3

You can view the whole board in that low-fi version:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php

Note that unlike the regular board layout, posts within individual forums are viewed in normal chronological order, from oldest post to newest. The very first post visible in the “Comments on Cecil’s Columns” forum is Welcome, from March 1999. It’s a kick to see it – almost everyone’s an anonymous guest! The very very first post – Thread #1 – is this one.

(I wasn’t around then – were posts moved over from another board software and the usernames didn’t transfer?)

It’s a great way to view the boards for those who don’t like all these fancy-schmancy colors and fonts that are so popular with the kids these days.

4

Actually, I made the first post and thread, was told that the board wasn’t really live yet, and then deleted that post/thread.

5

Except it collapses the quote boxes, making their content indistinguishable from the rest of the post.

6

Yeah…SURE you did!

7

There’s something poetic about the fact that the very first thread was deleted by a moderator and the second one was closed for being pointless.