deleting Topics means deleting know-how

[Duliwi]

Hello all together

A few weeks ago I discovered by accident that topics are deleted from time to time in this forum. They are not deleted, because they break a rule, but to make room for new posts.

I am on various other forums and have never experienced anything like this. And that's why I didn't expect it. Maybe somewhere in the user terms and conditions you can find a hint or warning regarding this practice. But I don't remember reading anything like this anywhere.

After I happened to read about it in a post by Huckleberry Finn, I immediately checked my topic list with the "your posts" function.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure how many posts I've written so far. But I think it used to be 1700-1800. Now it's only a little more than 1200. As I said, I'm not sure any more. But if that's true, then about a third of my topics have gone, even though my first topic is from July 2019. So topics were deleted that are significantly less than 4 years old.

I have a bad memory, but I can always remember, whether I've had a certain problem before or not. And then I simply search through my topics and thanks to the friendly and very helpful answers from back then, I can refresh my memory within a very short time. For example, the following topic is gone: https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=57458 and thus also the knowledge from this post. I still found the link in duckduckgo. But there is no content any more.

I also planned to read again all my topics, when changing from MX-19 Xfce to MX-23 Xfce, if I have to reinstall. Even though I will of course keep the "Home" during the reinstallation, many problems that I have already been able to solve, thanks to the help of many MX users, will certainly reappear during this reinstallation and reconfiguration, because there are configurations, that I had to make on "/". So it's not just all configured in the "Home".
(It isn't the case, that we don't have to configure anything, when we upgrade from MX-19 to MX-23, even if we choose "keep", when we install MX-23. In fact, some rare configurations can even be lost, when you move your system from an old hard disk to a new one using MX snapshot (personal snapshot) without changing the MX-version. That's what I experienced some weeks go. )

Suggestion: It would be good, if the admins would send a message to the relevant persons, before deleting topics, so that users have the possibility to archive the topics, that are important to them, locally.


Since I now know, that topics can be deleted, I have started to create a local archive on my hard drive.
But unfortunately the deleted topics are now irrevocably lost. That caught me on the wrong foot and is also a great pity for the effort that the respondents have made.

[richb]

Topics older than five years are automatically purged without intervention. If later ones were purged it was an error that was quickly corrected and affected one Forum.

1.If no cleanup is done the Forum database becomes unwieldy and is more expensive to maintain in time and money.
2.We are not obligated to keep anyone's backups, if something happens to this forum and you rely on it for information on your system, then it will be lost
3.The policy of how to run the forum is not determined by the users, although suggestions will be evaluated. But decisions will be made higher up, and determined what is best given utility, maintainability and cost.
4. Knowledge is not lost if one reposts rather than links. It is wise for users to keep information on their systems and problems solved locally.

[markol]

Some of my topics were removed as well, but they were less than 2 years old. I only found this one reference couple of days ago when someone on the FB asked about the same problem and I tried to help him with a link to our forum.

Here's the link to a deleted topic -> https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php ... 46#p675146

[Huckleberry Finn]

It's not a problem for me. Just: The search function is already not appetizing. And the database gets smaller, less results etc.

[richb]

Some of my topics were removed as well, but they were less than 2 years old. I only found this one reference couple of days ago when someone on the FB asked about the same problem and I tried to help him with a link to our forum.

Here's the link to a deleted topic -> https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php ... 46#p675146

As I wrote:

If later ones were purged it was an error that was quickly corrected and affected one Forum.

[Duliwi]

If later ones were purged it was an error that was quickly corrected and affected one Forum.

Thank you for your statement richb.
Which forum was affected and how was this corrected? Or rather, what do you mean by corrected?

[Stuart_M]

The post Duliwi is talking about is from the 25 November 2022 post by richb (https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php ... 22#p703522):

Posts older than five years do get purged as the database becomes unusually large and unwieldy. In this case it was done prematurely and is not the regular policy.

Some observations:

Doing a search of several random users to see how old their oldest post was that still had a valid URL to the post, I found many posts that go way beyond a five year cutoff - several all the way back to 2009! And intermingled with those old posts that still have valid URLs are posts that have been removed. There does not seem to be any rhyme or reason as to which posts will be removed and which will stay. But it is definitely not ALL posts that are older than five years because many remain that are older than five years. Perhaps a better way to understand the policy would be to say that posts older than five years will be subject to removal (but based on what reason?).



Some results to illustrate what I found:

I did a random search of users to see what the oldest post was and there were quite a few that go back to 2009. However those also contain many posts that have the forum URL removed, but there are a lot of URL's pointing to the old posts that are intermixed with the removed posts so there is clearly not a cutoff time.

Here are four users that have posts older than the "five year cutoff". Each entry contains the year of the oldest post that has a valid URL to that post. That is followed by the user's name in parentheses. The next line is the link to the search page for the oldest post. Note that ddifferent browsers may not show it correctly (Palemoon had the "lucky9" link off by one page) - look at the date of the oldest post as given below if needed). The third line is a short comment that includes the exact date of the oldest post.

2010 (lucky9)
https://forum.mxlinux.org/search.php?st ... &start=520
Two search pages after the oldest post of 23 December 2010 had older posts deleted

2009 (ko)
https://forum.mxlinux.org/search.php?st ... 8&start=70
Two search pages after the oldest post of 18 February 2009 had older posts deleted

2014 (whell)
https://forum.mxlinux.org/search.php?st ... 4&start=70
That link ends the post history with the oldest post 25 January 2014

2013 (KBD)
https://forum.mxlinux.org/search.php?st ... &start=990
That link ends the post history with the oldest post 12 September 2013

[richb]

To clarify, The Setup must be done on a per forum basis, and I have not completed setting up every forum. There for older posts will remain in those forums not changed.

[richb]

If later ones were purged it was an error that was quickly corrected and affected one Forum.

Thank you for your statement richb.
Which forum was affected and how was this corrected? Or rather, what do you mean by corrected?

By corrected I mean, when I recognized the error the time frame was reverted to 5 years rather than 2 that had been entered. That does not bring back the posts that had been deleted.

[manyroads]

For those who are unaware, https://archive.org (the Wayback machine aka the Internet Archive) takes periodic snapshots of websites. Their archives (snapshots) remain essentially forever. Here is the page highlighting the snapshots available for this forum: https://web.archive.org/web/20220000000 ... linux.org/

EDIT
Here's an example of another page worthy of accessing (perhaps it will make you smile):
https://web.archive.org/web/20220522065 ... off-15820/