How about more than 12 months?

[Jim_Birkenseer]

There is a lot of great technical information in this forum--I refer to it frequently. Only migrating one year of it is not enough, I think. Why can't all of it be migrated?

Cheers!

-- Jim

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Gets my vote...

[creig_bryan-mUOxt4]

More than 12 months, please.

Keep Smiling

[Dorothy_Krause]

favor... since the majority of threads are really asking the same questions that have been answered elsewhere, if people can point out specific topics that should be preserved, something may be able to be worked out to preserve the good and not drag clutter along.

I know I'll be putting in a bid to be sure the FAQ forums are carried along.

[PECourtejoie]

Many fora have their whole history since the beginning...
How many posts does this place have for the moment? (Adobe+Macromedia)

[_Phos_four_dots_]

MacMinute's founder, Stan Flack, died.

MacTech took over MacMinute's Forums.

MacTech also wanted to updated their own forums.

Somehow, they managed to merge all the threads and posts from MacMinute's forums with the threads and posts from MacTech.

Not only did the transition roll out pretty flawlessly, they somehow managed to incorporate all old threadsgoing back almost 10 years, and hundreds of thousands of posts(or more)from both sets of forums, they were able to transfer all of MacMinute's registered user accounts and merge that roster with the standing MacTech roster.

And guess what? Even though we all know that people are often quite resistant to change, the new format and forums were greeted with almost universal acclaim.

There are several lessons to be taken from that.

[Jacob Bugge]

As it is, threads generally fall into the Archive in question after aboput 7 months and into the abyss after a year. This means that generally the threads will be carried over.

The exception is the oldies: threads that have been preserved indefinitely, some of them bundled as the last threads before the Archive, some of them bundled as the last threads in he Archive.

In the Illustrator Windows forum there are 23 oldies out of 1046 threads, and in the Archive there are 16 oldies out of 1065 threads, totalling 39 oldies out of 2111 threads, 2%.

So if all threads were carried over, 98% of them would be no older than 1 year, and everything would be saved.

It should be noted that the oldies have been preserved for a reason, and it would take a greater effort to go to the ends of forums/archives and pick them up separately.

So why not bring the lot?

[john_cornicello__retired_]

As Jacob points out, most of the forums only contain data going back about 12 months or so.

But I have raised the point and we are going to look at bringing over everything from this current forum. That may still end up being 12 months.

Many of the oldies that are preserved were preserved for a specific reason back then (a few years ago) that not longer exists, but there hasn't been an effective way to go back to them to let them expire.

I have received some counter arguments, too, that having much older data pollutes search results because a user may pull up messages with answers that applied to an older version but are wrong, and sometimes dangerous, in relationship to a newer version of the software.

Anyway, the amount of data being imported is being re-visited.

John

[JayJhabrix]

I'm in favour of all the posts...

JJ

[Harbs.]

>As Jacob points out, most of the forums only contain data going back about 12 months or so.

>But I have raised the point and we are going to look at bringing over everything from this current forum.
That may still end up being 12 months.

>Many of the oldies that are preserved were preserved for a specific reason back then (a few years ago)
that not longer exists, but there hasn't been an effective way to go back to them
to let them expire.

But this really begs the question. Why do posts expire so quickly. Most of the stuff discussed is still relevant even years later. This is especially true on the scripting forums.

I don't really buy the search argument. There should be an option to limit the search to specific time periods. That way the user can decide whether old posts are "pollution" or not.

Please don't let threads expire on the new forums!!! (at least not for at least ten years or so...)

[john_cornicello__retired_]

Main reason for expiration was that the forum database had a hard size limit that we hit early in the forum's existence.

[Harbs.]

So, posts on the new forums will not expire?

If so, that's a strong argument for the change! That'll almost make me forget my utter disappointment about no NNTP...

[_Phos_four_dots_]

Maybe somebody can explain to me how THIS
thread got stretched out to about 1900pxW,
when there's only text in it?

[Harbs.]

Sorry about that. I just added some line breaks to my quote, and it shrunk back down...

[john_cornicello__retired_]

Some text was put into PRE tags.

And yes, we can keep everything on the new system (up to 100 gig, I believe).

[Jacob Bugge]

The oldies are timeless.

There is an ongoing effort to have everyone stating versions when asking, and answers are usually clarifying differences between versions whenever applicable.

So please, the lot.

[Dorothy_Krause]

Ack... still stretched out... I was going to add more breaks... but there aren't hosts rights set. John??

[john_cornicello__retired_]

Look better now?

[Dorothy_Krause]

much, thanks.

[Jim_Birkenseer]

Hi John,

Thanks for listening and considering moving over everything!

Even outdated messages can be helpful. Sometimes when I read an older message it gives me hints on how to approach the issue today.

Cheers!

-- Jim

[Bill12]

What might be useful is to archive the older FAQs someplace that is linked to each forum. For example, the forms creation FAQ in Acrobat has to be recreated with each new version since the old FAQs are deleted. As a result, we keep answering the same questions again until the old FAQs are basically replaced with minor change for the new version.

As for the topics themselves, I can live with the 12 month aspect.

[Jacob Bugge]

Some of the oldies, see posts #6+15, could be made FAQs.

[Dorothy_Krause]

What might be really nice would be to have a way for only the topics with questions that get asked repeatedly, and those that otherwise have little to no value, expire, and let the remainder live. Probably would cut out about 80%.

[Stan Jones]

A value of old posts is that the software versions do not have expiration dates, and users MUST be allowed to continue accessing resources.

The loss of older posts a year or so ago (was that because of the migration problems?) has proved to be a problem more than once, when important old posts can no longer be found.

There are many problems, workarounds, etc that are not documented in the knowledgebase, and I believe you should make every effort to keep old posts.

I use CS3. I upgraded to CS3 from PPro 2, AE 4, PS 6.5, Illustrator 9.... Adobe should not follow Intuit in formally ending support for products that work for their intended purposes. And forums are part of the users' support system even if there is a disclaimer that they are not Adobe support.

I like livedocs, and, while I realize there is a personnel support issue to vetting comments, I am frustrated that things we are still learning about CS3 cannot be added.

[Dorothy_Krause]

Stanley, I would hope that most of what users with older software need would be covered in the FAQ folders (that will be retained), or in knowledgebase articles. And they always have the option of posting questions. People are not unsupported in the forums for having old software.

It is asking a lot for Adobe to maintain active phone support for those products. That system is not cheap to keep for Adobe (and very likely very few people would be willing to pay the required price). Nor are the forums inexpensive for Adobe to maintain, but their value has been proven, and they *should* be considered part of the Adobe support system, even if it's just us users helping one another.