Hi Shooey - I have tried to PM you about this but your message box is full.

As it happens I was wondering, too. If nothing else, I need to clear my inbox but need moderator help....it there still is one!

To the moderator:

Can you please unlock this thread. I had it locked years ago due to spammers, but now l would like it unlocked so l can save various information. It contains lots of historical information on shoemakers. If l can't access it the history will be lost.

https://forums.filmnoirbuff.com/viewtopic.php?id=5804

I can't use the quote function to recover the old info because the thread is locked.

Last edited by The_Shooman (2023-05-04 02:03:55)

Shooey - there are no moderators on the forum.

Some members are able to clear their messages, others are not, this seems entirely random.

I was in touch with Film Noir Buff, the owner of the site, a few months ago and he tried to assign me moderator privilileges but found that he was unable to. All these problems are because the version of software the forum operates on is obsolete, the rest of the internet has moved on and full functionality has been lost. It could be easily be relaunched on an up to date platform, but the difficult part would be saving all the old content and transferring it over.

FNB has said that he is committed to resolving these issues and relaunching the forum, but frankly he’s probably been saying that for a couple of years. He hasn’t replied the last couple of times I have emailed him.

I must admit, I still have a little faith in these old forums despite being a legacy of another age...

Like Colin I still have a little faith in these old forums. A point of interest to me is that 10 posts here gets over 350 views!

I've been somewhat preoccupied with other things lately, so although I clocked this thread, I wasn't able to give it my full and undivided.
Now I've a bit more time on my hands, I'm currently exploring the possibility of using a bot to "scrape" all the threads (Talk Ivy specifically) on the forum and migrate it to a BB/Forum system that is still being maintained.
Combining a bot with the likes of some of the AI now available, I think it should, at least in theory, be possible to not only restore all of the "lost" posts (IE the ones you can only see when quoting) but also track down large numbers (although sadly not all) of the photos and pictures lost also.
I'm still at the early stages of the research but if I do manage to achieve anything to that end, it may be some kind of a solution.

^Tim

That sounds superb.

One of the main benefits of this forum has been the sharing of info as opposed to just new topics. There is some great content from some of the old Ivy hands that has disappeared.

Getting the archival material back would be really beneficial

Don't count your chickens lads, it's a complicated process and I'm not certain my knowledge of some of the requisite programming is up to it - I'll certainly be looking further into it yet though!