Notebook Review forum archive – NBRCHIVE

[Aaron44126]

There were so many pieces that luckily fell into place at the right time to capture the archive that we have.  I started out just wanting to grab the Precision section because that's where I am most active, and maybe the XPS section if there was time (because it is sort of related), and then I posted the HTTrack directions to help other users capture what is interesting to them.

Without @Sandy Bridge's app, I would have been limited to HTTrack which took way longer to get through threads.  Plus he really was a driving force in getting edge cases completed.  I did leave downloads running overnight but I was not up all night checking on things 😛

@Reciever shouldn't sell himself short.  He facilitated getting us all on VPNs which multiplied the amount of progress that we could make.  (Something that totally hadn't occurred to me.)  And he along with @Hiew were pulling stuff along with us, when they are already stretched to the limit just trying to get this new forum stood up (in addition to handling their own real-life stuff).

Everyone was building off of each other's ambitions on how far we could take it, it was fun 🙂

Of course, we are tremendously lucky that we got the notice that we did, both in terms of being able to pull stuff for the archive, and also in terms of having time to get this new site up with so many users moving over.  As @Custom90gt mentioned in a different thread, there was that forum downtime shortly before the announcement and TechTarget could have decided to throw in the towel right then.

[Ionising_Radiation]

I was thinking—since the subfora here mostly mirror those at NBR, perhaps there could be pinned and locked posts in each subforum linking to the corresponding archive, so that anyone who wants to restart a thread can continue on discussions. For instance, the Dell Mobile Precision (and Latitude and Vostro) subfora could both have a post linking to the NBRCHIVE equivalent. 

What do you guys think?

P.S. It is slightly irritating that 'John Carlson''s post is near the top of the archive of the Precision/Latitude/Vostro subforums, not least with an audacious title like 'the next NBR is here'. What impudence. Last I checked on Reddit, 'laptop-forum.net' (I don't want to link to it) already has spam. What a fail. 🤣

[serpro69]

7 minutes ago, Ionising_Radiation said:

I was thinking—since the subfora here mostly mirror those at NBR, perhaps there could be pinned and locked posts in each subforum linking to the corresponding archive, so that anyone who wants to restart a thread can continue on discussions. For instance, the Dell Mobile Precision (and Latitude and Vostro) subfora could both have a post linking to the NBRCHIVE equivalent. 

@Aaron44126 has already started linking the archives in existing threads, look at the Precision 7x60 owner's thread, for example: 

 

It has a link to the archive in the first post.

Edited February 1, 2022 by serpro69
fix link

[Ionising_Radiation]

4 minutes ago, serpro69 said:

has already started linking the archives in existing threads

Hmm, that works, but it requires a lot more manual intervention than merely pinning the equivalent subfora. Of course, whoever starts a '7530/7730 Owner's Lounge' could link to the corresponding archive themselves, but again, this still needs someone to trawl through the archive (although admittedly not too far behind). 

[Custom90gt]

I just wanted to say thanks again to all those involved in the archive operation at NBR, it seriously brought a tear to my eye to see such dedication even at the expense of your time and sleep.  I really am awe struck by it, so truly thank you.

I wish we could have given more notification about the forums, I think we were far too hopeful that TT would sell us the database/domain and we waited far too long for their response.  For that I apologize, perhaps it was just the end of an era that I was just unwilling to face. 

Keep up the good work!

[Aaron44126]

59 minutes ago, Ionising_Radiation said:

Hmm, that works, but it requires a lot more manual intervention than merely pinning the equivalent subfora. Of course, whoever starts a '7530/7730 Owner's Lounge' could link to the corresponding archive themselves, but again, this still needs someone to trawl through the archive (although admittedly not too far behind). 

For Precision specifically I am going to try to keep a link to the NBRCHIVE thread near the front of any owner's thread that shows up.  (I posted a link in the M4800 thread as soon as it opened, for example.)  I also plan to (eventually) add links to both the old and new owner's threads for each system to the "key posts" post.

I'll leave the discussion of whether we pin NBRCHIVE threads directly to this forum up to someone else, but I think that also muddies things up some and could be confusing for entirely new users coming across the site.

[Samir]

5 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

There were so many pieces that luckily fell into place at the right time to capture the archive that we have.  I started out just wanting to grab the Precision section because that's where I am most active, and maybe the XPS section if there was time (because it is sort of related), and then I posted the HTTrack directions to help other users capture what is interesting to them.

Without @Sandy Bridge's app, I would have been limited to HTTrack which took way longer to get through threads.  Plus he really was a driving force in getting edge cases completed.  I did leave downloads running overnight but I was not up all night checking on things 😛

@Reciever shouldn't sell himself short.  He facilitated getting us all on VPNs which multiplied the amount of progress that we could make.  (Something that totally hadn't occurred to me.)  And he along with @Hiew were pulling stuff along with us, when they are already stretched to the limit just trying to get this new forum stood up (in addition to handling their own real-life stuff).

Everyone was building off of each other's ambitions on how far we could take it, it was fun 🙂

Of course, we are tremendously lucky that we got the notice that we did, both in terms of being able to pull stuff for the archive, and also in terms of having time to get this new site up with so many users moving over.  As @Custom90gt mentioned in a different thread, there was that forum downtime shortly before the announcement and TechTarget could have decided to throw in the towel right then.

Sounds like it was the perfect storm of resources coming together. :)  I'm glad it did as I think the legacy posts of NBR are going to be safely online for years to come.

[Samir]

5 hours ago, serpro69 said:

@Aaron44126 has already started linking the archives in existing threads, look at the Precision 7x60 owner's thread, for example: 

 

It has a link to the archive in the first post.

Seem quite seamless in terms of what we as forum goers would expect when one thread ends and another begins.  I wonder if search engine spiders are going to crawl it and attribute it to NBR 3.1b or the hosted domain?  This is why in my mind it makes sense to have the archives hosted here as well--so that the seo will bring this site to the same level as NBR in terms of search results.

But the potential caveat to this is that it could bring TT's eyes for a DCMA take down request.  I would actually hesitate on making the archive this seamless until some time has passed.  TT needs to forget about us and NBR.  Then I think it will be safer to 'deep link' into the archive.

[Ishayin]

12 hours ago, Reciever said:

I could never fill in the shoes that Charles left behind, wish he was around. Maybe that will change in the future, hopefully it does even for a little while.

6 hours ago, Ionising_Radiation said:

I do wish there was some way to reach out to the old mods; they had a thankless job and performed it with aplomb. Maybe Charles might be interested in continuing as a moderator here, as might @Custom90gt and a few others...

I think at least some of them might be registered here already such as @Charles P. Jefferies , and I presume the others are mostly all aware of this forum at least. So it's really up to them whether they feel like continuing on in a similar role or would prefer to put their feet up and enjoy a well earned retirement 😄🍻

[Blacky]

1 hour ago, Samir said:

Seem quite seamless in terms of what we as forum goers would expect when one thread ends and another begins.  I wonder if search engine spiders are going to crawl it and attribute it to NBR 3.1b or the hosted domain?  This is why in my mind it makes sense to have the archives hosted here as well--so that the seo will bring this site to the same level as NBR in terms of search results.

But the potential caveat to this is that it could bring TT's eyes for a DCMA take down request.  I would actually hesitate on making the archive this seamless until some time has passed.  TT needs to forget about us and NBR.  Then I think it will be safer to 'deep link' into the archive.

 

That's the problem. I think we should try to import the archived forums as threads in this new forum, otherwise they will become uncrawlable. Often I used google to search through the old NBR forum.

[Aaron44126]

7 minutes ago, Blacky said:

 

That's the problem. I think we should try to import the archived forums as threads in this new forum, otherwise they will become uncrawlable. Often I used google to search through the old NBR forum.

I'm going to make sure that NBRCHIVE is crawlable on Google.  The next update will include a (rather basic) index page at the root of the site as a starting point for this.  Every page has a link to EFGXT in the top banner.

[Samir]

6 hours ago, Blacky said:

 

That's the problem. I think we should try to import the archived forums as threads in this new forum, otherwise they will become uncrawlable. Often I used google to search through the old NBR forum.

As long as they would be linked, they would still be crawlable, so I don't think that would be an issue.

[Samir]

Hey, were there any Toshiba threads?  I'm working on an older L555 and wanted to know everything about it.  Of course I start working on this after NBR1 goes down...

[Aaron44126]

Just an update.  Taking a bit longer than I thought to sift through everything.  I finally got all of the files on the server and unpacked.  Some stats — the archive is currently sitting at 295 GB and 6,226,158 individual files.  There is some duplicate data in there so as I consolidate, it will shrink a bit.

Today, I'm just going to try to get through basic consolidation and adding the info banner to the top of all of the threads.  Once that is done, I'll post it and work on more improvements later.

@Samir Yes, there was a whole Toshiba subforum so that will be included with the next update.

[Aaron44126]

I just updated the archive.

All of the threads that we have downloaded are now in.  You can check the top post of this thread.  I added links for the sections that were not available before.

Also, the post thresholds are gone.  We were able to get "all" threads for each subforum that we hit.

Other than that, a few of the subforums were pulled for a second time with added fixes from @Sandy Bridge to hopefully capture better copies of threads that got cut short in the initial pull.  I know that there was an ask about the HP business laptops subforum and that one got re-pulled.  As of the time of this post, those changes are still being merged in and they may not be visible for an hour or two.

Also, some threads are making you locate and click on a .html file to view the thread after selecting the folder containing it.  That'll be fixed up soon.

...At this point, once the merge is complete anyway, if you don't see a thread that you were interested in or if it is "damaged" in some way, obviously we are not going to be able to fix it with a pull from NBR.  We could take a look at fixing up important threads with data from archive.org if they have a better copy than we do.

I created a very basic index page at www.nbrchive.net and I'm going to try to get Google to start crawling the site.  Looks like DuckDuckGo already noticed it.  (I'll put a better index page there later.  I saved a copy of the NBR forums front page to use for this.)

Next on the list for me is some usability improvements.  I want to tie these threads in to a "full thread list" pull that I made from NBR with HTTrack.  (It will look a lot more like the Dell business laptops forum currently does when that is done.)  I want to add pagination to the longer threads (probably 50 threads per page) so they don't cause the browser to choke.  Some links in the pulled threads need to be fixed (post permalinks aren't functional, member profile links can point to archive.org...).  I want to update the forum search feature to do a Google site search so at least you can search for things.  And I want to do some general cleanup to anything pulled with HTTrack — removing the ad blocks, broken login links, and so forth.  I won't be moving quite as fast with these updates.  I need to make sure that IRL stuff gets some attention too 🙂

[John Ratsey]

I took the precaution of printing a PDF of the most recent 10 years of threads in the NBR Samsung forum (in which I used to be very active) so I have a chronological list of the threads, including the sticky ones, plus the size of the threads. When I have a bit of idle time I'm planning to make a thread here linking to what I think are the most important ones going forward. Older Samsung notebooks had a few bugs and NBR members had figured out fixes for many of them and it's likely that anyone wanting to breathe new life into one of those oldbooks could well be looking for help. As I've recently bought an LG notebook I did something similar for the NBR LG forum but it's a much shorter list (were LG notebooks less buggy or just less common?).

And if anyone needs a PDF of the NBR forum rules, I've got that as well.

[Aaron44126]

13 minutes ago, John Ratsey said:

I took the precaution of printing a PDF of the most recent 10 years of threads in the NBR Samsung forum (in which I used to be very active) so I have a chronological list of the threads, including the sticky ones, plus the size of the threads.

Not sure if you are talking about just the thread list, or the threads themselves.  (Dedication if you printed out all of those individual threads to PDF...)  I captured the entire thread list for the whole forum with HTTrack.  Here's the Samsung one.  ...Needs some work as CSS is broken right now as you can see.  In the end I plan to have it look like the Precision forum does but link to the XFA downloaded threads.

[John Ratsey]

1 hour ago, Aaron44126 said:

Not sure if you are talking about just the thread list, or the threads themselves.  (Dedication if you printed out all of those individual threads to PDF...)  I captured the entire thread list for the whole forum with HTTrack.  Here's the Samsung one.  ...Needs some work as CSS is broken right now as you can see.  In the end I plan to have it look like the Precision forum does but link to the XFA downloaded threads.

I only printed the list of threads - printing their contents would have taken an eternity. When you've sorted the CSS for your list then my PDF is effectively redundant although it may still be useful as a local reference.

[Aaron44126]

13 hours ago, John Ratsey said:

When you've sorted the CSS for your list then my PDF is effectively redundant although it may still be useful as a local reference.

CSS fixed up; the Samsung forum (and others) are viewable.  Thread links don't work yet so I haven't linked these subforum pages from the main page.

[John Ratsey]

4 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

CSS fixed up; the Samsung forum (and others) are viewable.  Thread links don't work yet so I haven't linked these subforum pages from the main page.

That's impressive. 🙂 Even complete with avatars!

[Dannemand]

Like others, I am awed by the dedication, professionalism and team spirit of this archiving project. No words can express my admiration and appreciation for @Aaron44126, @Sandy Bridge and @Reciever and others involved.

 

@John RatseyA few months ago I posted my old Samsung FAQ with links to solutions and answers for many older models. Basically the Word document I shared with you about 9 years ago, and which you encouraged me to post as-is -- but which I wanted to polish some more first. As usual, you were right, since I never got to complete said polishing 🙄

Anyways, between that FAQ and our good old Samsung Forum Sticky list, I think we have the older models covered for anyone Googling those model numbers and/or their various issues. Of course that assumes the thread links AND the links inside posts can be resolved, which I believe I am hearing they can and will.

 

Thanks again, guys. You pulled a miracle here!

 

[Aaron44126]

4 minutes ago, Dannemand said:

Anyways, between that FAQ and our good old Samsung Forum Sticky list, I think we have the older models covered for anyone Googling those model numbers and/or their various issues. Of course that assumes the thread links AND the links inside posts can be resolved, which I believe I am hearing they can and will.

Thread links at the "pretty" version of the forum that I linked a few posts up are probably a week or so out.  I need to write a bit of code to get everything hooked together.  However, you can use the dumb bullet point thread list and Ctrl+F for the thread that you want and see what we have pulled.  I think this is your FAQ?

Links from one thread to another will take a bit longer but I'm planning to get to that too.  (This is a good test case here, thanks...)

My immediate focus right now is cleaning up "dead links" in these archived threads before I submit it to Google for crawling.  Earlier today I got the "member profile" links pointing over to archive.org (instead of an error page).  Still need to fix up the "post permalink" links which are broken right now.

Anyway.  You can of course recreate your FAQ over in the new Samsung section here on EFGXT and point to the archived threads where appropriate.  (Might be easier to do after I get this link work cleaned up.)  I did something similar in the Precision section.

[Dannemand]

On 2/1/2022 at 6:32 AM, Ionising_Radiation said:

I do wish there was some way to reach out to the old mods; they had a thankless job and performed it with aplomb. Maybe Charles might be interested in continuing as a moderator here, as might @Custom90gt and a few others...

On 2/1/2022 at 1:22 PM, Ishatix said:

I think at least some of them might be registered here already such as @Charles P. Jefferies , and I presume the others are mostly all aware of this forum at least. So it's really up to them whether they feel like continuing on in a similar role or would prefer to put their feet up and enjoy a well earned retirement 😄🍻

Most of the mods that were active the last few years plus a few more are connected through a mail group, and they ARE aware of this and the other migration sites and were watching the efforts unfold. Reactions generally being along the same lines as what @Custom90gt, @John Ratsey and I have posted here.

As pointed out, some of us have joined already, either here and/or at notebook-review.com. I think the putting ones feet up slant is spot on: Not all former mods may be ready to resume duty, at least not right away. For my part, I know I wouldn't be able to commit the necessary time, so I am mostly lurking here.

[Dannemand]

6 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

Thread links at the "pretty" version of the forum that I linked a few posts up are probably a week or so out.  I need to write a bit of code to get everything hooked together.  However, you can use the dumb bullet point thread list and Ctrl+F for the thread that you want and see what we have pulled.  I think this is your FAQ?

Links from one thread to another will take a bit longer but I'm planning to get to that too.  (This is a good test case here, thanks...)

My immediate focus right now is cleaning up "dead links" in these archived threads before I submit it to Google for crawling.  Earlier today I got the "member profile" links pointing over to archive.org (instead of an error page).  Still need to fix up the "post permalink" links which are broken right now.

Anyway.  You can of course recreate your FAQ over in the new Samsung section here on EFGXT and point to the archived threads where appropriate.  (Might be easier to do after I get this link work cleaned up.)  I did something similar in the Precision section.

Thank you! Yes, spot on, that is the Samsung forum FAQ I posted last year. The other similar thread is the Samsung forum Sticky List which also contains a lot of links to other threads and posts.

I am just impressed that you are able to put the pieces together at all, and not concerned that it takes a while. Heck, when we migrated from vB to Xen, it took weeks (if not months) before links were resolved. And some never were.

I can use the bullet point thread list until then, although most of these FAQ type links are to specific posts rather than to threads.

Make sure to attend to life, family, and get some sleep; don't burn yourself out on this project so you get tired of it.

Once again thanks for all you do!

[Aaron44126]

3 minutes ago, Dannemand said:

I can use the bullet point thread list until then, although most of these FAQ type links are to specific posts rather than to threads.

Most of what I am doing right now is "a few minutes of regex work + a few minutes of testing + wait multiple hours for the change to be applied to all threads site-wide" so it's not too bad 🙂