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Gary, my PbP threads are growing in length and while they aren't as long as Heathy's, they are getting that way (especially my Eberron one). While I have no problem with setting up a new thread to save the site from having difficulties, I would have a problem if I couldn't access the old thread since I refer to it for details about names, places and so on (it has been running for two years and my memory isn't good enough to remember stuff I made up on the spur of the moment). Do you think it is likely I will have to set up a new thread anyway? Is it likely I would not be able to access the old thread for any length of time under those circumstances? Would it be better to set up a new thread now before the old one reaches a threatening length, so I can always have access to it in the archive?
(This may or may not be a different subject, but maybe it would be an idea that could help out with your problem, Aubrey.)
Suggestion: Could you, Gary, please implement a feature that would let users save an entire thread? ENworld has something similar (save entire thread as .txt file). This would be extremely helpful, especially with regards to threads that contain lots of information about APs I haven't gotten around to running yet - but which I doubt I will be able to find again when the time comes. Enabling users to save a thread to their hard disk (ideally, in .html format) could remedy that problem.
Firefox: File>save as... ?
Edit: Ok, that's just one page of a thread...
Senior Software Developer
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Sorry, I meant to reply to this yesterday but got distracted.
I like the idea of being able to export a thread, but I'm a little concerned about the memory requirements to fetch an entire thread at once. I think a gzip'd HTML file might be an OK format, but part of me leans toward some sort of XML so the posts can be more easily extracted in a useful way. Maybe RSS or Atom. If we did allow this I think I'd want to put some limitations on it so (for example) bots weren't continually requesting huge threads. I'll have to think more about what the parameters might be.
As for shutting down long threads, I'm hoping that a couple revisions I have in mind for the messageboards will make that unnecessary. Key word there being "hope." I still find it astounding that a thread becomes a problem when it hits 7,500 posts.
That's good, cos I'll have another 8,000 post beast in another year maybe.
Isle of Dread? 10 months.
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Yeah, just thought I’d mention it, not sure what the best way to handle it would be.
A couple of possibilities I thought of;
If possible, make the ‘list’ longer before things drop into the archives. So instead of displaying the 100 most recent threads, it displays the 200 most recent threads or something.
Break the play by post section into a number of sub-boards. These might be broken up by game system (D&D 3.5, 4e, PFRPG, “other” systems), or theme or something else.
Not sure how feasible either of those are, but that’s all I’ve got right now.