Well, showers are dangerous places . . . because it gives me TOO MUCH TIME TO THINK! ;-) I had what I thought was a good idea, but now I think it's a bad idea. But I'll tell you and see what you think . . . .

I was thinking that if a bunch of us got together and created a new forum, we could just go through the CS board and copy each thread (although I'd opt for deleting the discussion ones about things like why a thread was deleted or what should a new forum be called), then remove the ask a question option and let it stand as a read-only forum. Now for the bad part . . . . there are OVER 18 THOUSAND posts there!!! I think that is WAY too many for even a whole army of copiers to accomplish. {sigh} Well, it entertained me while I was in the shower!

-- Anonymous, May 28, 2002

Answers

Now I wish I hadn't posted so much!!!

-- Anonymous, May 28, 2002

I was one of many who asked Chuck for a copy of Countryside on CD and it was the best $5 I have spent in a long time. I tried copying the contents on to my hard drive, but even after 8 hours, it was only 43% done. So I have opted to leave it on the original CD for now.

The archives take a long time to access, so you do have to exercise some patience. Luckily, you are able to pick out what questions you want answers for. The bad part is sometimes, you find an interesting fact or answer to something which was not part of the question.

I totally agree with Joy about picking some of the questions which were obviously 'fluff'; I already have too much of that in daily life.

-- Anonymous, May 29, 2002

Joy, for me it's the 45 minute drive to and from work each day that gives me too much time to think. Now, I'm very computer illiterate when it comes to this web stuff so bear with me. :)

I don't have the CD of the archives. When you look at the archives on the CD, does it look just like what the CS forum looked like here on Lusenet or is it different? Is there any way the info from the CD could be put onto it's own website just as information, not as a forum? People could go to this site and look at the archives but not post anything. Then we could start the daughter of countryside forum and just have a link that says "to see the old archives, click here"

Does this make any sense? Is it at all do-able?

-- Anonymous, May 29, 2002

Joy...I do my best thinking while shoveling sh..!!

Sherri...I'm more computer illiterate than all of you folks put together!! But your idea sounds like a good plan...after all, folks build their own websites every day for their personal "stuff". Why can't the archives be stored that way?

Hello Jay? You know computers...can you tell us if that's possible??

-- Anonymous, May 29, 2002

Countryside is back up due to a snafu. If you want to see it, check the un-password protected list. Seems there was some trouble in paradise......

-- Anonymous, May 29, 2002

Sherri C. - The Archives CD, when accessed on my computer, looks EXACTLY like the greenspun. It has recent answers, and has the archives at the bottom, but I have not tried some of the links which are sometimes posted on those answers within the archives (does that make sense?). To my knowledge, I don't think you can write / post any information onto it, but I haven't as of yet tried that.

Anne - Chuck Holton e-mailed the users yesterday. It seems that the website which serviced the relocated BB crashed, perhaps for good. He has temporarily relocated it onto his website, while he tries to get the old one up or build another site.

Tough job, maintaining these BBs . . . Thank you Joy for all the work you do, keeping this BB going.

-- Anonymous, May 29, 2002

I asked Chuck my question and that's exactly what he's been trying to do. Apparently posting the archives "as is" would take up a bunch of server space due to the type of software Lusenet uses. He's trying to reformat the data into a different type of database that would still look pretty much the same but take up less server space and be a little easier to search. He said that once he does have the archives up anyone would be welcome to view it or link to it.

I guess I'm not such a computer dummy after all! :-)

-- Anonymous, May 29, 2002

Hmmm. Now I am wondering about the archives on CD. DO the links work? You know, when someone took the time to create a link using HTML, instread of just copying and pasting a URL.

The Garden Web format is pretty user friendly. I wonder what they use?

In any case, I'll probably have to get around to getting a CD from Phil . . . .

-- Anonymous, May 29, 2002

I like gardenweb's format too - Gee, d'ya suppose Spike would be willing to add a homesteading or BTS forum for us if Lusenet does ever go down?

-- Anonymous, May 30, 2002