I visited the Skeptiko forum and realised that Alex has deleted one of the subforums, "Consciousness and Science", either by accident or by purpose. I used to lurk on Skeptiko until Psiencequest started, and has been a lurker on Psiencequest since its start, until I got an account here this summer. If I remember correctly, when Psiencequest started, one of the users, I think it was @Laird, created an copy of the content of the Skeptiko subforums. Could this content be made available online in some way? There was a lot of useful information in the threads on the forums, and it would be great if that could become available to read again. Even though only the "Consciousness and Science" subforum has been deleted, I suppose it would be a good idea to make all the old Skeptiko subforums available online, in case Alex deletes the other ones too sometime in the future.
Making a copy of the old Skeptiko forums available online
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I appreciate the sentiment but I feel like it's a bit weird to transfer posts from people who may not want their posting history to extend into a forum they aren't even members of.
It sucks if Alex does decide to do purposefully delete the forums, but I kind of feel like that is just something that has to be accepted. There was a great but deleted site on Psi and Survival that I tried to archive, but I have since thrown that hard drive out and now I think it wouldn't have been right to publish the materials onto a new site either.
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'
- Bertrand Russell 
Yes, I did scrape four of the Skeptiko forums, including the "Consciousness and Science" forum, back in August of 2017. Along similar lines to the sentiments expressed by Sci, I am now wary that republishing that content would be iffy in the sense of potentially violating copyright, but it seems that it would be legal and ethical to share it privately. I'll PM you, @Wanderer.
I'd support publishing them, as long as authors had the the ability to delete their posts if they wanted to. My own Skeptiko posts that Laird saved and provided to me are invaluable - I'm extremely grateful to Laird to have them.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. 
(2023-11-19, 06:25 PM)Wanderer Wrote: I visited the Skeptiko forum and realised that Alex has deleted one of the subforums, "Consciousness and Science", either by accident or by purpose. I used to lurk on Skeptiko until Psiencequest started, and has been a lurker on Psiencequest since its start, until I got an account here this summer. If I remember correctly, when Psiencequest started, one of the users, I think it was @Laird, created an copy of the content of the Skeptiko subforums. Could this content be made available online in some way? There was a lot of useful information in the threads on the forums, and it would be great if that could become available to read again. Even though only the "Consciousness and Science" subforum has been deleted, I suppose it would be a good idea to make all the old Skeptiko subforums available online, in case Alex deletes the other ones too sometime in the future. I was a member of Skeptiko for many years, and indeed moderated the forum for a while. I keep glancing at that forum and my impression is that Alex has more or less lost interest in the forum. It is entirely possible that you could ask him and obtain permission to copy whatever you like. Once you open the front page from the year of your choosing, it is possible to browse from there! For example, you can start from here: http://web.archive.org/web/2019060901312...forum.com/ I looked for the forum on the Way Back engine, and there are lots of entries., however I'm not sure how easy it would be to extract information from the non-live copy. I have attached a copy of the front of the forum from 2015. Indeed there was an extra forum back then! David (This post was last modified: 2023-11-20, 09:37 PM by David001. Edited 1 time in total.)
(2023-11-20, 05:10 AM)Max_B Wrote: I'd support publishing them, as long as authors had the the ability to delete their posts if they wanted to. My own Skeptiko posts that Laird saved and provided to me are invaluable - I'm extremely grateful to Laird to have them. I used to post there with my real name, and I'm cautious about publishing the entire thing! There was a lot of acrimony back then, and I'd really rather that could be put to bed. Unless there is some limit, it seems fairly accessible using the Way Back Machine. David
(2023-11-20, 09:30 PM)David001 Wrote: I keep glancing at that [Skeptiko] forum and my impression is that Alex has more or less lost interest in the forum. Well, I suppose that was why some of us came and started this forum in the first place  Personally, in a very general sense I'm happy to let old stuff fade away, it's good that the internet is capable of losing things. It always seems totally unnatural to have fleeting conversations like a moment standing at the bar in a pub, instead of remaining only as a fading wisp of a memory, be served up again in every detail.
A further exploration of the Way Back image of Skeptiko was disappointing. For example, I started here:
https://skeptiko-forum.com/threads/parac...ness.4212/ I thought that was great but I wanted to read the second page, and that was not available! Many of the best Skeptiko discussions extended over a large number of pages (as here). David
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