Einar Saukas wrote: ↑Thu Dec 28, 2017 2:41 pm
We all share the same concerns about WoS decline and all the valuable information it contains.
Err, you have Martijn to thank for the decline of WoS. When he found true love, he more or less abandoned updates on WoS. And then after the site trundled on for a number of years, the server became unreliable, before finally failing completely.
Einar Saukas wrote: ↑Thu Dec 28, 2017 2:41 pmThat's exactly what we are all working to prevent!
Funny, I thought your objective was simply to maintain a database.
Einar Saukas wrote: ↑Thu Dec 28, 2017 2:41 pmRight now, there's a copy of all files from the original WoS archive preserved at Archive.org. The entire content of Martijn's Infoseek database is stored inside ZXDB, with corrections and improvements. Both SpectrumComputing and ZXInfo provide basically the same information you can find at the original WoS archive, except SpectrumComputing currently adopts a more strict policy to only distribute permitted files. Even so, it recently got green light to redistribute all games from Hewson, Zenobi and a few others, more will certainly follow. And SpectrumComputing already achieved the same "spirit" of the old WoS forum from its best days.
First off, it's rare that Archive.org captures all publicity available data. Second, it's even less likely to capture non-publicly available data, or get pages/data if there are broken links. So when did Archive.org crawl WoS? When WoS was not being maintained by Martijn or more recently? Please also note that Archive.org is just as venerable to server or hard drive failure as any other site. Earlier this year, I could not access a site archived on Archive.org due to a system failure. I don't know if this was a temporary failure or something else.
SpectrumComputing only has a fraction of copyright holders permissions compared to WoS. And in case anyone had not noticed, the World of Spectrum site is online and no less functional than when this forum came online. Lee has recently posted on WoS his plans for the near future.
Lee wrote:As we edge closer to the new site switching over, we are looking at additional features, storage and the future of WoS.
At the moment, the site takes up nearly 250gb - including the database size (approximately 2.5gb). This doesn't include books.
So, moving forward, we will be adding books next - these will be similar to the magazines pages, followed by software, hardware, and the rest of the old WoS data.
2018 will see us integrating the forums more into WoS. This means users will log onto WoS in general, and allow users to vote for software, comment on each database entry, as well as other goodies associated with personal accounts. We will also be integrating the majority of the forums into Infoseek. Add to this the language translations, text versions of scans and other work we are preparing for, there is a lot going on!
Finally, we are looking at lifting download restrictions as per old WoS.
So if anything, the WoS sites are expanding and improving. And the
WoS forums look plenty active to me. The
magazines section is looking really good now.
Einar Saukas wrote: ↑Thu Dec 28, 2017 2:41 pmThe only part we still risk loosing, if WoS goes down, is all the forum history. Although WoS forum searches are still broken, thus in practice most of its content is already inaccessible anyway... Also there's a good chance Martijn kept a backup when he left, so if the forum disappears, we could simply contact him and ask for his approval to restore a read-only copy somewhere.
The search system is not perfect, granted. But it is possible to find lots of stuff. So it's not as useless as you imply. Any possible archive of the forum data will be just as hard to use unless a pre-search database is constructed, or you throw lots of resources at it.
The forum software that this forum is using also has problems with it's search function. As this forum is still relatively small, it's not likely to be a problem at the moment. But should it grow to anywhere near the size of WoS forums or StarDot forums or any similar sized forum, then various problems may appear with the search functionality.
Given what happened, I think it unlikely that Martijn will have anything other than a very old backup. So even if he does have such a thing, it will be of limited value.
If everyone really values the online archive and Sinclair computer internet presence, then you should support
all web sites that are about the Sinclair computers (ZX80, ZX81, ZX Spectrum etc) including WoS.
The infighting that has happened in recent times helps no one. So let's see some community spirit and goodwill for the New Year
And there are a number of other Sinclair computers web sites that would love more support
Mark