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So apparently this forum is being forcefully migrated onto a new software.


No idea if this board will become a redirect or if it'll be lost. Just in case, this is the new forum: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/shiftingworlds/index.php?sid=6d7cdd9bf16fe74fe159125e27894b7d

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Recovery Operations - SDM needs your help
Topic Started: Jan 2 2015, 12:06 AM (127 Views)
Rhinoceros
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i hate it when i'm reading the book of revelations and then rhinoceros
I apologize for the separate thread but I wanted this to be visible.


As most of you are probably aware by now (and the rest of you are in on what's happening), the old recovery site that I was using to transfer our stuff over from the club archive has been made public. This is because, quite simply, I realized I can't do it by myself.


And why is that? We'll I'll get into it. But first let me apologize for my inaction. I put off the recovery projects, thinking I could get around to them, only for the archives to die. So I'm sorry I let it get this far. Now that the archives are back, though, I have every intention of seeing this through. That being said...


So to refresh those who may not remember, the reason I was the one to do the recovery in the first place was because of my still-valid mod powers as club owner over there. This means I can still edit posts. And editing posts means I can copy the raw data instead of the block text, so we keep our formatting. Our bolds, our italics, etc etc. Less time spent on formatting means quicker copying.


However I have run into a small problem. Some of the tags for old DS are incompatible with SW's, despite both being BB Code. Now some of these are negligible, such as the video/media tags (since videos are rare enough for it to be a non-issue). But others, most notably quote tags, are much more frequent and a bigger pain to correct.


Code: See, old DS' quoting system is long and complex, and looks like this
 
[quote name='SDM' timestamp='1306642487' post='2271846']text[/quote]

Code: While ours is much simpler
 
[quote=SDM]text[/quote]

But all the same changing it takes a couple seconds. Now that doesn't seem like much. But I've run the calculations. Adding together the threads that were requested to be recovered (as summarized in this post, with the missing halves of ongoing RPs also included, just unmentioned), and considering how frequently we use quotes, those seconds add up fast. And with 1,410 pages to sift through... we can't rely on just me if we want to see this done before holy bombs the archive again.




And so we come to this thread. To discuss our options. I have a few suggestions of how we might be able to do this.

First I should highlight how I've been doing this. I split it into three phases:


Phase 1
I follow the posting order of the thread I'm trying to transfer, and lay out a "framework." That is, I note the order users post in, in then I establish a "grandfather" quote box so we know who's speaking, along with some filler text (since on this board, making an empty quote box erases the quote tags and you have an empty post). You can see an example of what this looks like here.

Also note that I do not actually read the posts. As such, posts that could be deemed "irrelevant" get included. However, I believe this works to our advantage, at least for now. The post numbering remains intact this way, and allows us to use it as a guide. For instance, say Kanako was post number 419 over on DS. Doing it this way sees to it that he's post 419 in the corresponding thread here. If we skip any we weren't supposed to or accidentally double post, we will be able to catch it.

Of course, once the transfer is complete we can delete the needless posts.


Phase 2
This is basically where I crack open the editors on both sites, and then just Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V all the way to the bottom of a page. Again, I don't read the posts, so accuracy is dependent on phase 1 being complete and in check.


Phase 3
Tag-editing. This is the longest and most tedious phase.


It has been suggested that we just delete the quotes. I see two problems with this:

1.) Especially in multi-quote posts, deleting the quotes take about as much time to delete as tag-editing so it makes little difference.

2.) This potentially leads to a lack of context. This risk only greatly increases during battles, in which quotes are almost necessary to discern if the poster is replying to the enemy or to an ally.




The way I see it, Phase 2, no matter what, is going to fall on me. Phase 1 I can also do, but having help in it would be appreciated. Phase 3, on the other hand...especially if I'm doing phase 1 as well, it would slow me down considerably, and I can't just leave the tags unedited or it kinda breaks the post. Right now things are set so that SW Veterans (you guys) are able to edit even administrator posts, so it's possible for me to leave them for you to fix.


Of course if you have other suggestions on how we can do this please speak up. Time is not our friend. There's no way of telling how long we'll be able to keep the archives before they're nuked again, possibly for good.
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