As the person who did the vast majority of the archival work (23 pages to be specific), I feel like I have to make a statement of some sort.
When I set out to do this, my goal was to preserve the bay12 mafia subforum in a way as to leave it as untouched by the quicktopic shutdown as possible. I wanted future forumites to have the same browsing experience as I did, rather than have their hearts broken by a bunch of 404 links. Such things create an atmosphere of decay, like a condemned building with broken windows. It doesn't matter if there are people still living in it, to the outside world it will appear to be dead which can only push it further into decline.
That's why I did my best to archive everything. I've had some friends ask me why I didn't just archive the "good" games, and I know many of you who wanted to prioritize the Notable Games Archive, but my goal had always been to preserve a community, rather than create a museum. A community isn't just a best-hits album. It's a mix of both the good and the bad, the classy and the cringe. A community is raw and lived-in, while a museum is sterile.
Having a stamp with all the updated links in the Opening or Final post may be useful, but it's a partial admission of defeat. It makes me think of the plaque on a statue, commemorating a former greatness that is nevertheless with us no longer. It's a statement that things have irrevokably changed as a result of the quicktopic shutdown, even though I believe this is far from the case.
Though we're all burnt out right now, it's important to remember that
this was a triumph! The quicktopic shutdown threatened to gut our forum's history, but in response, we now have more quicktopic links available for viewing than we did before! Long-forgotten mysteries such as what the mafia were up to in
BYOR: Choices have finally been resolved (spoilers: it was Webadict!), and we discovered hidden depths in games we thought we had all figured out. How many of you knew there was a private web chat in
KILL WEBADICT NOW: WEBADICT EDITION ?
(you'll have to wait for Tolyk to post his links before you can read the QTs though)
I want this to be a story about resiliency, rather than loss. I want this to be the story about how the subforum barely noticed when quicktopic shut down. I want this to be a story that we can one day forget.
I don't know what will ultimately happen to the links we saved, but I believe that if we are going to go through the effort of making a bot, then I believe it's worth going the extra mile to allow it to do seamless edits. To help this, I'd be willing to go through the effort of gathering quote URLs (ie. quoting the post that needs to be edited, and then saving that link). I believe we'll have an easier time achieving ideal results if the bot already knows which post it needs to edit, rather than spend time programming a sub-routine that has to search for it.
Whatever we do will likely take a while though. I think in the meantime it's important for us to post our quicktopic links somewhere where they are at least accessible, even if it's a bit rough.
I am a little burnt out though. I'll probably start this sometime after I finish my final exam on Saturday. I think a new topic just for the archive is a wise idea.
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Topic: Oh jeez, Quicktopic is shutting down (Read 61820 times)