TTF Archives are LIVE!

Sticky
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BGuttman
Posts: 7368
Joined: Mar 22, 2018

by BGuttman »

Masterful job, Matt! Maybe this will get the TTF members in here. :good: :good: :good:

(really looking for that Smilie of "bowing down before greatness")
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Neo_Bri
Posts: 1342
Joined: Mar 21, 2018

by Neo_Bri »

Finally, the wait is over! As many of you know, Matt K built a bot to make a backup of the TTF in the event it eventually might go down. The formatting was obviously different from phpBB so it took some time to get all of it imported but we finished the process earlier this morning.

All content on The Trombone Forum published prior to 2007 was under a Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US)), which can be found here:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/

In short this means that the content is free to be shared (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) so long as the following terms are met:

1. Attribution
  • Appropriate credit must be given
  • A link to the license must be provided (see the above hyperlink)
  • And any changes need to be indicated (So long as these changes are done in any reasonable manner but not in anyway that suggests the licensor endorses the usage.)


2. Non Commercial
  • The material may not be used for commercial purposes


3. NoDerivatives
  • If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.


There are no further restrictions, not even legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Additionally, the copyright indicator on the TTF never displayed a copyright for content outside of the 2000-2006 window so most content probably doesn’t apply, but we wanted to put this here for the sake of showing that we are fully compliant with the content.

Therefore:

  • All content in the section of the Trombone Chat forums labelled “TTF Archives” comes from the Trombone Forum. Any user prefixed with “ttf_” is a user from The Trombone Forum and all of the content they have provided originates from The Trombone Forum.
  • The link to the CCL can be found here.
  • I have made the following changes to the content:
    <LIST type="decimal"><LI>HTML has been largely converted to BBCode
  • Smileys (and most other images) have been removed and replaced, at least temporarily, with the word “IMAGE”
  • Certain topics with malformed HTML or BBCode have been deleted or altered to fix the malformed formatting
  • Quotations did not translate very well in many cases, so quotations may not be as evident as they were in the TTF
  • There may be other formatting or even content issues that were altered by the code that copied the messages into BBCode format which we are unaware of
</LI>
[*][*]The material is not being used for commercial purposes
[*][*]We have not remixed or otherwise transformed the material as per the third bubble here
</LIST>

We hope everybody enjoys this resource and are glad to be able to provide this archive for the rich information that has been generously provided over the years. We are locking all of the topics so that nobody may post into the archives. We want to keep all material moving forward on the main site!
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Neo_Bri
Posts: 1342
Joined: Mar 21, 2018

by Neo_Bri »

Beautiful job, Matt K! We all appreciate the work you did with this.
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Mv2541
Posts: 562
Joined: Mar 29, 2018

by Mv2541 »

Very very cool to have all that information not lost!
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SwissTbone
Posts: 1138
Joined: Mar 23, 2018

by SwissTbone »

Incredible. Great work!

I guess all those posts will be indexed by google over time?
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Neo_Bri
Posts: 1342
Joined: Mar 21, 2018

by Neo_Bri »

[quote="cozzagiorgi"]Incredible. Great work!

I guess all those posts will be indexed by google over time?[/quote]

Correct. And Bing, etc. Bots have already begun doing their work.
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boneagain
Posts: 276
Joined: Mar 24, 2018

by boneagain »

Kudos!

Great to be able to search here and find those TTF posts!

Hard to overestimate how important those will be, longer term.

Easy to underestimate just how much work it was to get it done.

My hat is off to Matt!
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Matt_K
Posts: 4809
Joined: Mar 21, 2018

by Matt_K »

[quote="cozzagiorgi"]Incredible. Great work!

I guess all those posts will be indexed by google over time?[/quote]

We've already had several hits from Google so I suspect in the coming days we'll start to see them show up in Google.

I also want to point out that there are some odd duplicates that either existed in the original or maybe were a consequence of people editing them. If you see a duplicate post in the archive, you can report it to us. (In the latte theme, this is the exclamation point). I made two special reports: one for duplicate posts and the other for mangled posts. I gave everyone read only access except the moderators who can make any changes flagged. That way we keep new content new, old content old, but also simultaneously can preserve the old content!
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Grah
Posts: 103
Joined: Mar 23, 2018

by Grah »

Where is the link?
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Matt_K
Posts: 4809
Joined: Mar 21, 2018

by Matt_K »

No link! They're on the front page for convenience :good:
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RichC
Posts: 177
Joined: Mar 23, 2018

by RichC »

Grah...go to the main page and scroll to the bottom. The archives are listed under its own header.

Well done, Matt! :good: question...the 'arhives' classifieds contains a folder 'classifieds' (2 layers). Can the hyperlink to directly to the sub folder ? (hope I'm making sense in the description)
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BGuttman
Posts: 7368
Joined: Mar 22, 2018

by BGuttman »

[quote="RichC"]...

Well done, Matt! :good: question...the 'arhives' classifieds contains a folder 'classifieds' (2 layers). Can the hyperlink to directly to the sub folder ? (hope I'm making sense in the description)[/quote]

The Classifieds were in 2 "layers" in the original TTF as well.

I wouldn't get too excited about listings there -- most of them are over 2 months old and would have been deleted by now.

If you are looking to buy or sell, use the Chat Classifieds. They are better set up than TTF (which was intended to be temporary anyway).
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Matt_K
Posts: 4809
Joined: Mar 21, 2018

by Matt_K »

To expand upon Bruce's point, the classifieds were actually in their own forum but the software on the TTF represented them differently than the phpBB layout, thus the odd subforum indication. We actually intended to hide them because, as Bruce mentioned, they are old at this point and further the entire Archives are locked for uses so you cannot post in them. To avoid confusion we still might hide them (since we don't want anyone getting frustrated when they can't post a classified ad, the bot measures we have in place are confusing enough!).
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RichC
Posts: 177
Joined: Mar 23, 2018

by RichC »

Yup...understood & agreed with, Bruce...a non-issue. I wasn't suggesting wasting any time on it. Just thought it might be simply directing a link differently. Thx.
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RichC
Posts: 177
Joined: Mar 23, 2018

by RichC »

[quote="Matt K"]We actually intended to hide them because, as Bruce mentioned, they are old at this point and further the entire Archives are locked for uses so you cannot post in them. To avoid confusion we still might hide them (since we don't want anyone getting frustrated when they can't post a classified ad, the bot measures we have in place are confusing enough!).[/quote]
Just my worthless 2 cents...might want to keep them available in case one wants to refresh their memory about a particular sale, etc.,

Thanks for your hard work, Matt...must have gone through a lot of coffee working on that!
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basstrombone
Posts: 4
Joined: Mar 23, 2018

by basstrombone »

This is amazing, thank you so much for your hard work on this resource! Can’t imagine the amount of work put in to make this happen, but having this information preserved and accessible is invaluable! Thank you!
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Matt_K
Posts: 4809
Joined: Mar 21, 2018

by Matt_K »

Not worthless at all! Now that we have newer software it makes much more sense to keep them. One of the reasons we limited classified ads in the TTF was that the search feature was basically non existent so trying to wade through years of classifieds ads could be really frustrating! If we get complaints about it there are a couple options we could do to keep them from being confused with the current listings too.

And there was MUCH coffee involved, although that isn't too different from a normal day for me. I've been on a cold brew kick lately and I make a LOT of it with my liter sized mason jar :amazed:
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Kbiggs
Posts: 1768
Joined: Mar 24, 2018

by Kbiggs »

A thousand thanks. May you grow old and wise, may your children love you, and may you never lose your place while counting rests!
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greenbean
Posts: 1958
Joined: Mar 23, 2018

by greenbean »

Awesome work, guys!!
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Neo_Bri
Posts: 1342
Joined: Mar 21, 2018

by Neo_Bri »

It's funny. It kept getting mentioned in certain threads and we had to actually delete and edit a few of our own posts to keep it under wraps. Not to mention bite our tongues as the requests kept piling up.

Glad we could get it done.
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Matt_K
Posts: 4809
Joined: Mar 21, 2018

by Matt_K »

That was the hardest part!!
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Drizabone
Posts: 9
Joined: Mar 23, 2018

by Drizabone »

Well done guys.

I reckon this makes TC much more valuable.
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PaKETaZ
Posts: 72
Joined: Mar 23, 2018

by PaKETaZ »

Amazing!!! I can’t thank you enough!
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afugate
Posts: 671
Joined: Mar 23, 2018

by afugate »

Bravo, Matt -- and everyone else who has been involved in this labor of love on our behalf. :good:

This will make our new home so much more useful! The analogy seems apropos. It is kind of like we moved into a new house and the moving company just now brought our furniture.

Thank you!

-Andy in OKC
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elmsandr
Posts: 1373
Joined: Mar 23, 2018

by elmsandr »

This is an excellent and amazing resource.

Now, can you delete all the stupid stuff I said and only leave the nuggets of minor trivia that I provide?

Y’all deserve to be paid for this. Make the books transparent and I am sure many of us would be happy to subscribe.

Cheers,

Andy
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sf105
Posts: 433
Joined: Mar 24, 2018

by sf105 »

Great job.

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LowrBrass
Posts: 17
Joined: Mar 25, 2018

by LowrBrass »

Yes. All of the above. Much awesome. Very wow.
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bhcordova
Posts: 10
Joined: Mar 26, 2018

by bhcordova »

Copyright is implied once the content is fixed on a medium, unless explicitly placed in the public domain.
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greenbean
Posts: 1958
Joined: Mar 23, 2018

by greenbean »

[quote="bhcordova"]Copyright is implied once the content is fixed on a medium, unless explicitly placed in the public domain.[/quote]

If I recall correctly, TTF had some language that put the content in the public domain (or something to that effect). Even if that is not the case, archiving the TTF info here probably falls under Fair Use.
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Neo_Bri
Posts: 1342
Joined: Mar 21, 2018

by Neo_Bri »

Glad everyone likes the resource. And by the way, the search function on our site works very well. I tried it myself.
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Matt_K
Posts: 4809
Joined: Mar 21, 2018

by Matt_K »

I was digging through the terms of service, which can be found in the wayback machine [url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170517161543/http://tromboneforum.org:80/index.php/topic,29862.0.html]here as [url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170918053456/http://tromboneforum.org:80/index.php/topic,29862.msg404477.html]here, and found this included in a post from RLB:

Post editing and deleting

Posts may be edited by the poster for a period of up to four days after posting. Please note that, since the content is never actually fixed in a medium, the poster therefore holds no copyright on the material. Neither does The Trombone Forum need a license to use/host the content in the post. All posts are therefore public domain content.


So it does appear to be included in the public domain. We'll still keep the Creative Commons License information for the sake of full transparency.
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Ted
Posts: 66
Joined: Mar 23, 2018

by Ted »

That is fantastic! Great job!
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blast
Posts: 671
Joined: Mar 22, 2018

by blast »

With this development TC has become THE place to visit for trombone matters...... BRAVO.

Chris
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Lornix
Posts: 14
Joined: Apr 09, 2018

by Lornix »

For those who are continuing to have difficulty locating the archive - here is my experience.

1) The archive is at the bottom of the page - if you don't scroll down far enough, you won't see it.

2) I think that I did not see the archive when I just came to the site - but when I logged in, it appeared. I am not sure whether this is an indication that the archive is "registered users only" content - or whether I was pulling a copy of the page from cache on my machine, and logging in was enough to force my browser to fully redownload the page. However, the reason is not that important - simply registering an account and logging in probably will be enough for you to see the page. If you want to browse anonymously - you might find success by clearing the cache in your browser.
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gbedinger
Posts: 117
Joined: Mar 23, 2018

by gbedinger »

Nice job, fellas!
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mwpfoot
Posts: 97
Joined: Mar 23, 2018

by mwpfoot »

Strong work! ya might want to prefix the forum names to be clear in all different views:

TTF Archives: Classified Advertisements

TTF Archives: Town Hall

TTF Archives: Teaching & Learning

TTF Archives: Creation and Performance

TTF Archives: Horns, Gear, and Equipment

TTF Archives: Practice Break

:idea:
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Matt_K
Posts: 4809
Joined: Mar 21, 2018

by Matt_K »

My original plan was to make it it's own subforum so it would be clear that it was the archive but I didn't make the subforum right! It's a good suggestion either way and we'll probably get to that shortly. We have something else were working on right now that's really cool! But it needs refinement!

I'm not sure why they aren't showing up as unregistered. I may have forgot to give Guests access. I can check into that soon as well. I know for sure I gave bots access because I want the content to appear on Google/Bing/etc!
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BGuttman
Posts: 7368
Joined: Mar 22, 2018

by BGuttman »

I've also noticed that "sticky" posts are not at the top; apparently they lost their "stickiness" in the transfer. Still, what we have is pretty good and I'm not going to complain.
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Matt_K
Posts: 4809
Joined: Mar 21, 2018

by Matt_K »

[quote="BGuttman"]I've also noticed that "sticky" posts are not at the top; apparently they lost their "stickiness" in the transfer. Still, what we have is pretty good and I'm not going to complain.[/quote]

Yeah, oddly enough that information wasn't present anywhere in the site frontend. It must have been a database entry or something that merely affected it's placement in the display.

I created a "report" topic for problems with the archive so everyone can feel free to report content that is either poorly formatted (missing syntax or something like that) or duplicated. Similarly, if something was a sticky, report it as a formatting problem and I'll sticky it.
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BGuttman
Posts: 7368
Joined: Mar 22, 2018

by BGuttman »

I think we Mods can also sticky. If I see something I remember as a sticky I'll correct it.
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Jimkinkella
Posts: 286
Joined: Mar 23, 2018

by Jimkinkella »

It seems like the archive posts only go back so far, or might have a post limit? Or is that just my server's view?
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Matt_K
Posts: 4809
Joined: Mar 21, 2018

by Matt_K »

It's possible there are some missing posts. It *should* be everything but because we didn't have access to the backend, I ended up building a scraper for it. The basic behavior was that it would get to a page, see if any threads were not in the database and if not, to scrap it then move on to the next page. If there was activity in the particular thread while it was scraping... in hind sight... it may have went on to the next page without getting all of the information.

If there is something that's glaringly not present, I can change the URL of my bot to go to the wayback machine. I'm not sure the extent of the missingness (if indeed there are missing posts).
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MoominDave
Posts: 102
Joined: Mar 24, 2018

by MoominDave »

Great stuff. Top effort, Matt.

Is it possible to associate the "ttf_***" usernames with our new TC usernames? I've used the same one (been using it in various places for a long time now), but others have changed, and it can be confusing (e.g. I would not have realised that Neo Bri was Sliphorn if someone hadn't explicitly mentioned it).
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PhilG
Posts: 15
Joined: Apr 09, 2018

by PhilG »

Great work! Thanks to everyone who has made this resource accessible again.
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SwissTbone
Posts: 1138
Joined: Mar 23, 2018

by SwissTbone »

[quote="MoominDave"]Great stuff. Top effort, Matt.

Is it possible to associate the "ttf_***" usernames with our new TC usernames? I've used the same one (been using it in various places for a long time now), but others have changed, and it can be confusing (e.g. I would not have realised that Neo Bri was Sliphorn if someone hadn't explicitly mentioned it).[/quote]

That would be the icing on the cake!
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Matt_K
Posts: 4809
Joined: Mar 21, 2018

by Matt_K »

[quote="MoominDave"]Great stuff. Top effort, Matt.

Is it possible to associate the "ttf_***" usernames with our new TC usernames? I've used the same one (been using it in various places for a long time now), but others have changed, and it can be confusing (e.g. I would not have realised that Neo Bri was Sliphorn if someone hadn't explicitly mentioned it).[/quote]

Possible - Yes! Practically, probably not unfortunately. It would take a lot of time to build the crosswalk (there are around 2800 users with the 'ttf_' prefix) and it would make difficult to update if I did discover which posts were missing and then later add them. We also don't want to make it so that people can edit (so we can comply with the Creative Commons License, if indeed it does end up being applicable) so we'd have to apply special permissions to the site too. And then beyond that running into the issue where the reverse happens; someone may have had a common handle over there and they stopped using it and no longer do any posts and some new person comes along to TromboneChat and starts using it... now I've accidentally attributed posts to the wrong person! But nothing is off the table per se so as I have time after building some of the other ideas, we may have some way to do that.
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Crazytrombonist505
Posts: 236
Joined: Mar 27, 2018

by Crazytrombonist505 »

Great job Matt! Thanks for all your work to make this all possible.
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Neo_Bri
Posts: 1342
Joined: Mar 21, 2018

by Neo_Bri »

[quote="MoominDave"]Great stuff. Top effort, Matt.

Is it possible to associate the "ttf_***" usernames with our new TC usernames? I've used the same one (been using it in various places for a long time now), but others have changed, and it can be confusing (e.g. I would not have realised that Neo Bri was Sliphorn if someone hadn't explicitly mentioned it).[/quote]

We discussed that as the original idea, but decided it'd make more sense to not have any directly linked. But most of the time you can associate the two accounts via good-old human association. That solves a host of potential legal problems, etc.
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Jimkinkella
Posts: 286
Joined: Mar 23, 2018

by Jimkinkella »

It seems like the archive posts only go back so far, or is it just what I'm seeing for some reason?
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Matt_K
Posts: 4809
Joined: Mar 21, 2018

by Matt_K »

Check out what I had mentioned a few posts back. There might be some missingness due to a problem with the scraper that was unrealized until now.
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Driswood
Posts: 308
Joined: Mar 24, 2018

by Driswood »

Great that all that information is not lost! Thanks to you for starting Trombone Chat and saving posts from TTF!

Jerry Walker
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Jimkinkella
Posts: 286
Joined: Mar 23, 2018

by Jimkinkella »

Thanks Matt, I know I jumped into the deep end searching for some old posts from Sam and Roland Barber. There are at least a few things missing.

Kudos on the progress, though.
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cctbone
Posts: 163
Joined: Apr 04, 2018

by cctbone »

Strong <EMOJI seq="1f4aa" tseq="1f4aa">💪</EMOJI> work!
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djkennedy
Posts: 385
Joined: Apr 15, 2018

by djkennedy »

GEE JUST FOUND THIS have emailed RLB a few times and kept looking for something

a buddy in texas also tried to download all the content of ttf just overwhelming --and there were several attempts kinda like mutiny on the bountiful trombone forum --

[[[[[[[[ can remember when the ''new'' reboot was either --so much content --the face book method is ok but cant keep the specific threads --thankfully FB can now have the political wangers !!!!!!! while the williams club remains intact !!!!!!!///meanwhile please joinup FB/// INTERGALACTIC TROMBONE ASSOCIATION ==everything else the ITA isnt !!!!!!!! i only had abt 10,000 pms !!!!!!! FB can also have much --TROMBONE FOR SALE ETC !!!!!!MPC TRADING -- one of the best things on old ttf -----parents asking abt horns for their kids and the various instrument info threads

we have all missed the forum --but were always afraid when it would blink //rlb became more reclusive //THANK YOU ON BEHALF OF ALL THE BONERS BONEHEADS BASSBONERS JAZZERS BEGINNERS BIZZNESS TYPES PROFESSORS WANNABEES RETURNBONERS HOLLYWOODS AND DUMMIES
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Neo_Bri
Posts: 1342
Joined: Mar 21, 2018

by Neo_Bri »

[quote="djkennedy"]GEE JUST FOUND THIS have emailed RLB a few times and kept looking for something

a buddy in texas also tried to download all the content of ttf just overwhelming --and there were several attempts kinda like mutiny on the bountiful trombone forum --

[[[[[[[[ can remember when the ''new'' reboot was either --so much content --the face book method is ok but cant keep the specific threads --thankfully FB can now have the political wangers !!!!!!! while the williams club remains intact !!!!!!!///meanwhile please joinup FB/// INTERGALACTIC TROMBONE ASSOCIATION ==everything else the ITA isnt !!!!!!!! i only had abt 10,000 pms !!!!!!! FB can also have much --TROMBONE FOR SALE ETC !!!!!!MPC TRADING -- one of the best things on old ttf -----parents asking abt horns for their kids and the various instrument info threads

we have all missed the forum --but were always afraid when it would blink //rlb became more reclusive //THANK YOU ON BEHALF OF ALL THE BONERS BONEHEADS BASSBONERS JAZZERS BEGINNERS BIZZNESS TYPES PROFESSORS WANNABEES RETURNBONERS HOLLYWOODS AND DUMMIES[/quote]
Welcome, DJ! We've been waiting for you. Get the others aboard!
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mwpfoot
Posts: 97
Joined: Mar 23, 2018

by mwpfoot »

[quote="djkennedy"]thankfully FB can now have the political wangers !!!!!!![/quote]

For the record - I'll dump political wangers from the Facebook group without even saying goodbye. I'll delete the political post too. Flush, I ain't havin' it. :hi:

Facebook is good for immediate conversation and pix but it's terrible for reference or deep dives. We need a dedicated forum - and this one is great!

:good:
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Jimtrombone
Posts: 34
Joined: Apr 20, 2018

by Jimtrombone »

Thanks to all who did the hard work to get us up and running again!
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Chiptingle
Posts: 87
Joined: Apr 30, 2018

by Chiptingle »

Thanks for this service to the bonistic community!

Cheers all,
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JohnL
Posts: 2529
Joined: Mar 23, 2018

by JohnL »

[quote="Matt K"]Check out what I had mentioned a few posts back. There might be some missingness due to a problem with the scraper that was unrealized until now.[/quote]
I've resisted bringing this up for a little while, but I think it's time we acknowledged the elephant in the room.

It seems the scraper missed quite a bit. As of the last snapshot on the Wayback Machine, the "Instruments" section of TTF had 187771 posts in 13,038 topics (that is a LOT of posts and topics). That section of the TTF Archive on TC has 9140 posts in 284 topics. It's s similar situation for the other sections.

Sadly, the Wayback Machine's snapshots typically don't go very deep into the site, so finding information is hit-or-miss (mostly miss). I've had some success pulling info from Google Cache, but that's also hit-or-miss.

So where does that leave us? :cry:
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Matt_K
Posts: 4809
Joined: Mar 21, 2018

by Matt_K »

[quote="JohnL"]<QUOTE author="Matt K" post_id="57915" time="1523386701" user_id="48">
Check out what I had mentioned a few posts back. There might be some missingness due to a problem with the scraper that was unrealized until now.[/quote]
I've resisted bringing this up for a little while, but I think it's time we acknowledged the elephant in the room.

It seems the scraper missed quite a bit. As of the last snapshot on the Wayback Machine, the "Instruments" section of TTF had 187771 posts in 13,038 topics (that is a LOT of posts and topics). That section of the TTF Archive on TC has 9140 posts in 284 topics. It's s similar situation for the other sections.

Sadly, the Wayback Machine's snapshots typically don't go very deep into the site, so finding information is hit-or-miss (mostly miss). I've had some success pulling info from Google Cache, but that's also hit-or-miss.

So where does that leave us? :cry:
</QUOTE>

You're not wrong! The scraper was actually one of the first things I did in Python when I was learning it and I offered to make it do the classified pruning, which became it's main function. Unfortunately, because of the way the site organized threads, it wouldn't always get every post on a given page of threads. I didn't realize that because it did the classified section fine, which makes sense given how shallow it was compared to the other sections. Although the number of posts isn't actually as high as it is reported. We (TTF) lost the ability long ago to reset those numbers, so that includes topics that were moved and deleted (which happened quite frequently with people trying to post a classified ad to the instruments section, for example).

I could point the scraper at the archive machine, but as you mentioned, even it didn't get everything and it was a proper webspider! So unfortunately, those posts are currently lost until they come back. If the site does come back and it has largely the same structure, I can do a full scrape of it. Heck, maybe even it'll have the "backup" feature re enabled! I saved the scripts that I used to copy them over, so it won't take 30 more hours of work to get them on there, I *should* just be able to import the new ones here in the event that happens.
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Remo
Posts: 13
Joined: Mar 04, 2019

by Remo »

Kudos to all those that got the old TTF info backed up and on to the new forum, no small feat! I realize that this is a late post in the thread, but I just got signed back up. I've been away on other boards on other instruments (I know, *shame*) and I thought I had signed up on TC long ago. Guess not, and with old TTF still out I tried again.