I find it’s easier and much more efficient to use Google to search the SDMB for old threads.
Lately I whenever I click on a link for an archived thread, I cannot get to the archived thread, it goes straight to a generic, archive version of the SDMB Home page.
Is it just me?
Aha. Sorry I didn’t see that.
So I see you didn’t get an answer either.
No, but I did find a workaround, so you should still be able to read the threads.
Cool.
Not sure why that happens.
We don’t “archive” threads per se – but there’s a ton of really old ones that when you pull them up through Google, that’s what you get. I suspect those are threads that were not originally created in vBulletin but in the message board software we used prior to adopting vB – UBB, I think it was – and vB attempts to render from what it has, which in some cases might not be much.
And over the years we’ve moved from one server to another – several times – is it possible the database has some corruption to it, some holes in it? Definitely yes.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it, anyway … I could be wrong. But that’s my best guess.
Nah, you can see almost any thread in an Archived version regardless of when it was created. I’m not sure how google decides to serve up archived versions vs regular versions, but you can see threads created today in archive form if you click on Archive in that blue band at the bottom of the page.
Right. But sometimes you just get the archive form and there’s nothing in it but a bunch of hyperlinks … no actual “archived” content. That’s what I’m referring to.
Do you have an example?
Last night, I was doing a few board searches on google. After the first couple, google decided that it was best if all my results were archive links that all loaded to a blank placeholder page (several different searches and every results page). 
Even a thread just from this March was the archived version. Ugh.
If you go to http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/ you will see the bunch of hyperlinks to which Tuba refers.
Whether intentional or not, a directory named “archive” exists on the SDMB’s webserver. Maybe vBulletin creates it automatically. Google has sniffed its way into that directory. Atthis link for example you can see everything that’s been posted in ATMB since the beginning of time (1999).
To prevent this from being indexed the ‘robots.txt’ file (http://boards.straightdope.com/robots.txt) can be edited to tell search engines not to index the content within /archive/ as is currently being done to prevent them from indexing the content within /staffboards/
Google and most other major search engines will honor this request if it’s available to them.
Because it’s an archive of the main page. From there you can navigate to an archived version of each forum, the threads in that forum, and the actual forums and threads themselves so I’m not seeing how that satisfies the claim of ‘no actual content’. I’m not seeing why UBB vs VB is relevant.
Right, I don’t think that is the case either. For whatever reason any bad path after “index.php” in the links will result in that default page. For example http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php?asdfasdasdf34343434 In the case of actual content, the google links are somehow broken by replacing the “?” after index.php with a “/”, as you discovered when you found a way to view the actual content.
Another workaround is when at the Google search results page, to click on Google’s cached version for the link you want. That’ll show you, in archive form, the page you want, with a link to “View the full version”.