UPDATE: Open Letter to Goob about NSwiki.net

[95X]

95X signs.

If no means of obtaining this data exist, we instead ask for an explanation as to why the data is now unaccessible. It is our hope this is not the case, but if it is, we will accept it and move on.

If the data is no longer available for any reason (including, but not limited to: hardware/software failure, destroyed/blanked by spammers, copyright issues, legal issues, financial issues, disputes of any nature), I can simply accept "The data is no longer available."

[Josh Sebastian]

signs

[Pey]

Sign me up.

[Todd McCloud]

Well, I have an update, everyone.


It appears the data is indeed lost. Two backups were made: a 2008 copy, which is currently being hosted, and a 2013 copy. The 2013 copy is truncated right up to the article text, meaning that the users, edit history, even deleted pages are all in the database. The actual article text itself, however, is not. To put things in perspective, the 2008 copy goes up to revision #336004. The 2013 copy would have included all revisions, up to #704183. This means most revisions are lost. As far as I and a few others feel, it appears that the wiki is lost.


Please do not get angry at the people involved - that's not productive. Unless a miracle happens, we're stuck with what we have. We have a new wiki now, and it will probably be hosted by NS itself, which is cool. There are also a handful of pages that still exist on the archive.org website, which may provide useful to you.


I'm sorry to have to bring you this news, but in the end it's best we found out the truth rather than be stuck in limbo.

[Todd McCloud]

I've provided some links that might be helpful if you're trying to convert what's left of the wiki over to the new one:

* Current Nswiki site
* 2008 nswiki backup
* Archive.org page captures
* NSwiki image database. It's still intact, so you can lift all your images from it.
* Convert html to wiki format. Might be helpful if you saved your pages as a webpage.

[Blood Wine]

Doesn't this fit better in one of the RP fora or NSG?

Too bad a lot was lost,but new beginnings and better quality is nice - plus better stability now NS hosts the data themself

[RiderSyl]

Thank you Todd, for this open letter and its role in helping get the facts straight. It's unfortunate the wiki is lost, but at least now we know that it's lost instead of being stuck in a state of unknowing.

[Omigodtheykilledkenny]

Is there not a way to transfer the info from Wayback onto another site? If the 2008 archive could be transferred to create the NSwiki archive, then surely the archive.org data could also be transferred to a more permanent locale?

[Todd McCloud]

Is there not a way to transfer the info from Wayback onto another site? If the 2008 archive could be transferred to create the NSwiki archive, then surely the archive.org data could also be transferred to a more permanent locale?

I think the thing is the 2008 stuff is based on a backup mediawiki database that's complete, hence why they were able to do the archive.nswiki.org site. The 2013 mediawiki file does not contain article text, and all that's really left of it is on the wayback machine.

The only thing I've found useful is saving the wayback articles in html, copying the source to a place that converts html to wiki (like this) and sort of ironing out the rest to make the article look presentable. But it's kind of a long and tedious process. If there's any easier way to go about it, I'm all ears and would love to take everything we can from the wayback site, because they're slowly going away or being replaced by newer page captures.

Also this would be easier if we had an active dude who was on the old wiki as a sysop to help sysop this one with us. Wink wink.

[Hobbesistan]

I'll sign even though the chances of this actually accomplishing anything is pretty slim.

[Todd McCloud]

I'll sign even though the chances of this actually accomplishing anything is pretty slim.

Read a few posts up. We're reasonably confident that we've reached the end of the line. There's a slim, slim chance. But it'd have to be a miracle or something of that ilk for the missing article texts to appear again. So, we've been forced to move on.

[Wetwork XIII]

Nice work chasing this Todd, cheers for the resolution.

[Blood Wine]

I wanne bet next year someone turns up with the whole thing he found on a dusty external drive

[Todd McCloud]

I wanne bet next year someone turns up with the whole thing he found on a dusty external drive

Well, as far as I know the only guy to do backups was Goob, and he did two in it's 8-year run (I think it was 8 years), and one of the two were corrupted, so, it does not appear to look good right now.

[Southfar]

Pardon me the necromancy, but I believe I have a relevant addition to make of which I know not whereelse I would stick it.
The mention of necromancy sets the key-note for this post, I believe: I have unearthed a load of NSWIKI articles, without their respective edit histories, in text format. If the re-made wiki is still active and whoever operates it is interested, I shall provide them.

[Applebania]

Pardon me the necromancy, but I believe I have a relevant addition to make of which I know not whereelse I would stick it.
The mention of necromancy sets the key-note for this post, I believe: I have unearthed a load of NSWIKI articles, without their respective edit histories, in text format. If the re-made wiki is still active and whoever operates it is interested, I shall provide them.

When are these articles from?

[Southfar]

I've not looked at all of them, but the ones I did look at seemed all to be from 2006 through 2008.
Now, one might say that their usefulness is negated by the existence of an entire backup of the 2008 status that we already have access to - however, the current nswiki.org does not include the vast majority of the articles that were on the old NSWiki even in 2008 and which should have been included in that backup. If the cause for that is that the backup was incomplete, then my files may serve to attenuate the magnitude of that problem, even if only marginally.

[Zwangzug]

I've not looked at all of them, but the ones I did look at seemed all to be from 2006 through 2008.
Now, one might say that their usefulness is negated by the existence of an entire backup of the 2008 status that we already have access to - however, the current nswiki.org does not include the vast majority of the articles that were on the old NSWiki even in 2008 and which should have been included in that backup. If the cause for that is that the backup was incomplete, then my files may serve to attenuate the magnitude of that problem, even if only marginally.

The nswiki.org site does not have the archive files from the old wiki on its main domain, but they are stored on a subdomain, archive.nswiki.org. However, that subdomain has been down since April.

[Minoa]

I've not looked at all of them, but the ones I did look at seemed all to be from 2006 through 2008.
Now, one might say that their usefulness is negated by the existence of an entire backup of the 2008 status that we already have access to - however, the current nswiki.org does not include the vast majority of the articles that were on the old NSWiki even in 2008 and which should have been included in that backup. If the cause for that is that the backup was incomplete, then my files may serve to attenuate the magnitude of that problem, even if only marginally.

The nswiki.org site does not have the archive files from the old wiki on its main domain, but they are stored on a subdomain, archive.nswiki.org. However, that subdomain has been down since April.

Hi, I should add that I am aware (I have stated before) that the domain NSwiki.net expired last month on the 3rd, so unless Gooobergunch renews it soon it is unlikely he will be able to make a fresh data dump from what remains of NSwiki.

That said, NSindex already has an active data dump service (older data dumps have moved to the Web Archive although I continue to keep local copies), and if my poor health is to get worse then I will always make the available last version available to the public.