Broken Links, Deleted Archives & Search Engine Problems

[victoria3]

I thought we should have a new topic to identify: Broken Links, Deleted Archives & Search Engine Problems.

Whenever anyone notices a broken link, deleted archive or search engine issues please post here. As I mentioned in another thread recently, ‘This forum is a treasure trove of years of accumulated information with input from scholars, connoisseurs, historians and enthusiasts. We need to protect this as a Legacy and the ability to search is critical. Recent teachat updates have created broken links to older posts and OTTI's, I will continue to comment when I see links missing etc. and I hope others will comment also in an effort to protect what we have accumulated over so many years.’

So far I have seen that we have lost many OTTI posts, there are broken links to many older posts pre-2010, and many archives are missing.

As an example, today I was search for an old post of mine (to resolve photo attachment issues)

IMG_2182.JPG

and searching doesn’t locate it inside of its topic;
‘Sincha OTTI 2013 AKA OTTI 18’

Then I just searched the first few words of my post, with no results;
‘I've been meaning to post about #24’

The search engine cuts off, in both cases, Searched Terms, see below - (sorry photo are being reduced to a blur by teachat for some reason!!) ;

IMG_2185.JPG

IMG_2184.JPG

[Mrs. Chip]

Victoria3, it is a mess, I agree

[debunix]

Not a solution, but another way forward.....if you and others have links to photos sorted for those relevant to tea, you can post them in the new topic I just created for links to tea photos.

[victoria3]

@steve why have you not replied to this thread? That's what a site admins job is to reply to these kind of questions. In the now locked thread 'Poor. I am here and gone' you posted something pretty obtuse. Technically there would have been no reason to delet threads as part of a site update and transfer. Can you clarify;

"We understand that there are questions, all of which have been answered to the best of our ability. What happened to posts? They were deleted in an effort to make updates run smoothly. While we understand that is disheartening, at the end of the day decisions like this are made to ensure the continuation and proliferation of the boards. Outdated, unanswered, and effectively "dead" posts were purged. "

We would like to recoup those lost files which many of us contributed hundreds of hours to.
Thank You

[Chip]

Like! Oops, not FB.

[Xeractha]

Outdated, unanswered, and effectively "dead" posts were purged. "

Did they manually check every single post to see whether the information there was useful? Highly unlikely. Even an unanswered question can contain something useful to others, especially if it was only a statement.
(Wanted to ask this in the other thread but it's locked.)

[jayinhk]

Outdated, unanswered, and effectively "dead" posts were purged. "

Did they manually check every single post to see whether the information there was useful? Highly unlikely. Even an unanswered question can contain something useful to others, especially if it was only a statement.
(Wanted to ask this in the other thread but it's locked.)

I found that part of the post very disturbing!

[Steve@Adagio]

Thanks all. I am happy to answer the questions. I apologize for the delay in responding, but as some of you may know, there is a lot going on behind the scenes.

Why were the posts deleted? At the request of Adagio and to purge the site of inactive, effectively dead conversations. While they have been archived, there are no plans to reinstate them as most were from 5+ years ago and have not been touched.

As for the broken links, IT is working on fixing them. This process takes time as each link has to be inspected and fixed individually.

Thank you for your patience as we work to make TeaChat more functional.

[Xeractha]

Why were the posts deleted? At the request of Adagio and to purge the site of inactive, effectively dead conversations. While they have been archived, there are no plans to reinstate them as most were from 5+ years ago and have not been touched.

"5. Please do not reply to posts more than a year old in date. If you find yourself interested in the topic, feel free to create a new one. We want to keep the conversation current and relevant. "

One of the reasons old posts were not touched. Though nowadays I see a lot of necroing, mostly newly registered users do this. This doesn't mean no one reads old topics. Inactive threads have a purpose too.
But let's take a look at this: viewtopic.php?f=7&p=297697
Thread was forgotten for years but someone was interested again (even if it's a fake account).

Probably lots of posts exist about fake pu-erhs and it would be a shame if they ever got deleted. People check those threads even after years just to guess whether they bought or about to buy genuine cakes. Such threads are treasures actually.

Obviously, there are many redundant posts like "how are you?" "what's your favourite this, that and those". I assume no one checked the content of threads and those were deleted just by looking at dates. Of course non teaheads will never know if a few sentences are worthy of keeping.

[Chip]

Why were the posts deleted? At the request of Adagio and to purge the site of inactive, effectively dead conversations. While they have been archived, there are no plans to reinstate them as most were from 5+ years ago and have not been touched.

"5. Please do not reply to posts more than a year old in date. If you find yourself interested in the topic, feel free to create a new one. We want to keep the conversation current and relevant. "

One of the reasons old posts were not touched. Though nowadays I see a lot of necroing, mostly newly registered users do this. This doesn't mean no one reads old topics. Inactive threads have a purpose too.
But let's take a look at this: viewtopic.php?f=7&p=297697
Thread was forgotten for years but someone was interested again (even if it's a fake account).

Probably lots of posts exist about fake pu-erhs and it would be a shame if they ever got deleted. People check those threads even after years just to guess whether they bought or about to buy genuine cakes. Such threads are treasures actually.

Obviously, there are many redundant posts like "how are you?" "what's your favourite this, that and those". I assume no one checked the content of threads and those were deleted just by looking at dates. Of course non teaheads will never know if a few sentences are worthy of keeping.

They were deleted wholesale. Countless hours of posts removed w/o discussion. Yet there were older topics left on. OTTI and NOTTI entire forums ... Poof!

What a shame and grossly inconsiderate ... and uncaring to those who took time on this forum to post.

... nails in the coffin.

[Chip]

Thanks all. I am happy to answer the questions. I apologize for the delay in responding, but as some of you may know, there is a lot going on behind the scenes.

Why were the posts deleted? At the request of Adagio and to purge the site of inactive, effectively dead conversations. While they have been archived, there are no plans to reinstate them as most were from 5+ years ago and have not been touched.

As for the broken links, IT is working on fixing them. This process takes time as each link has to be inspected and fixed individually.

Thank you for your patience as we work to make TeaChat more functional.

Many of the links are broken because the topics were deleted.

So all of the deleted posts are archived. Great, create a seperate private domain to allow those passionately interested to view the forum in its entirety before the deletions ... even for a limited time of several months.

This would be a compromise that might work.

[victoria3]

Thanks all. I am happy to answer the questions. I apologize for the delay in responding, but as some of you may know, there is a lot going on behind the scenes.

Why were the posts deleted? At the request of Adagio and to purge the site of inactive, effectively dead conversations. While they have been archived, there are no plans to reinstate them as most were from 5+ years ago and have not been touched.

As for the broken links, IT is working on fixing them. This process takes time as each link has to be inspected and fixed individually.

Thank you for your patience as we work to make TeaChat more functional.

Many of the links are broken because the topics were deleted.

So all of the deleted posts are archived. Great, create a seperate private domain to allow those passionately interested to view the forum in its entirety before the deletions ... even for a limited time of several months.

This would be a compromise that might work.

Yes, this is a very good idea. Those deleted archives are important to ongoing research I have been doing for a book. @steve it would help a great deal if you restore those deleted archives temporarily to a new domain. Thanks you in advance.

[jayinhk]

Steve, messing with the board too much means many of us who have hung around despite the changes in the online tea discussion world are going to jump ship to other boards shortly--this was the premier English language tea site for over a decade and I think the decision to remove old material was made in error. That move has hurt TeaChat and a lot of great info has been lost. We understand this is Adagio's board, but TeaChat was 'home' to many of us for years and our contributions are invaluable to us. Chip ran a great ship for years and now with the uncertainty it seems we have no choice but to start planning for a move to greener pastures.

[debunix]

I have often used advanced search to find things in old topics on this board, to avoid asking the same questions over and over, and to help point newbies at posts that might be years old but contain still accurate and timely information, to avoid wasting time reposting the same info over and over. Long quiet does not mean useless, and obscure topics may have very useful descriptions of a particular tea, teaware, potter, tea purveyor, or tea growing area, book on tea, etc.

[Ferg]

Steve-O hasn't been online since the last posting here, 9/28.