Alex has temporarily reactivated deleted forums

[Laird]

An update: the scrape of the "Other" forum has now been uploaded too. Am currently downloading threads from the Consciousness & Science forum.

[Laird]

Am currently downloading threads from the Consciousness & Science forum.

Now finished, and uploaded to http://psiencequest.net/skeptiko-forum-scrapes/

Extended Consciousness scrape now underway, last one, woohoo.

[Laird]

Extended Consciousness scrape now underway, last one, woohoo.

Done and uploaded. We have all we need.

If anybody wants to work on converting this JSON data into HTML pages for easy browsing, then please speak up, otherwise I'll get onto it myself in due course.

Thanks for all your hard work in saving that material from being lost altogether. And thanks also to Alex for his cooperation.

Laird - what you are doing is wonderful, and I hope will work successfully - will the end result be read-only, or will it be possible for people to continue a discussion in place?

After several conversations with Alex, I must say that I still don't understand why he wants to do this. Alex's actions seem terribly destructive of what he himself has built up over many years.

David

[Ninshub]

Laird - what you are doing is wonderful, and I hope will work successfully - will the end result be read-only, or will it be possible for people to continue a discussion in place?

I would disagree with being able to continue adding to those Skeptiko sub-forums on this forum, or on integrating them here. This forum has/will have its own subforums, rules, etc. On the other hand, I would have no problem with people using pieces of that content to recreate or start or add to discussions here.

I would disagree with being able to continue adding to those Skeptiko sub-forums on this forum, or on integrating them here. This forum has/will have its own subforums, rules, etc. On the other hand, I would have no problem with people using pieces of that content to recreate or start or add to discussions here.

Hmmm, that's different from what I was expecting. I just assumed it was getting integrated in some way over time, so it was available to the search engines via this domain/forum, although I hadn't a clue about how you what you were going to do that.

I think it would be great if the old Skeptiko comment were available to search engines, and also if there were a dedicated search facility on this site.

About continuation, it's easy to start a new thread here quoting one of the old Skeptiko threads (and I assume it will be easy to link back to that thread when the old material has been converted to html). The only thing lacking would be a link forward from the archive to the continuation thread. But one can't ask for everything, and I'd guess that incorporating all the old content seamlessly into the new forum would involve a huge amount of work.

Apparently Alex has reinstated some forums for a bit.

Personally I won't be going back, it's too volatile as to when the forums will be deleted again. Happy to help with the upkeep & growth of Psience Quest.