"That belongs in a museum!" - Archiving PA History on CoRe

Zonugal · February 13

As this community continues to shuffle forward in anticipation of its migration to its new home in the spring, how users might go about carrying over our shared history to be stored as artifacts within our new home is handled through two pathways that have been agreed to by the CoRe Transition Team:

Archiving Individual Threads
If a request is made to transfer or archive the entirety of an individual thread from the Penny Arcade forums, please send a private message to me, Zonugal, that includes the consent of every user who posted in the chosen thread. Once obtained and stored within the records of the community (as maintained by the board’s secretary), the thread may be transferred over in its entirety. Having every active poster in the chosen thread included in a group private message expressing their consent is enough, as that chain of approval can itself be carried forward in the archival process. Now, this pathway is primarily designed for threads with an incredibly small user-base, play-by-post threads on Critical Failure come to mind, but if a user thinks another thread can qualify under this pathway, have at it!

Archiving Individual Posts
If a request is made to transfer or archive an individual post from the Penny Arcade forums, please send a private message to me, Zonugal, that includes an image file that has the following items removed:
– The date of the post, as well as the name/avatars/signatures of any user
– Any reference to personal information that could be used to dox a previous/current user
– No sensitive material (for example, references to medical issues)
– In addition, the user must include a brief commentary on why this post should be archived.

After many months of debate, the CoRe Transition Team believes this is the best approach to archiving our shared history that respects our userbase (those still here and those that no longer frequent the forums).

Delzhand · February 13

There may be technical means of preserving anonymized threads for which consent is unavailable, as well. I'm going to do some exploratory work on this very soon, will have more info soon

Tofystedeth · February 13

For the individual post, is the archived item the image of the post? Is my reading of that correct?

Heffling · February 13

I understand the reasoning on why we'd want user consent to move a thread over, but requiring every participant in the thread to consent effectively is a ban on porting threads over.

RatherDashing · February 13

Eh, if it's mostly play-by-post threads this is intended for, getting every participant on board is going to be fairly trivial.

RatherDashing · February 13

that said I think we owe it to the internet to archive every Star Wars thread since we have so effectively and unanimously determined precisely why TLJ was bad. I don't think we'll have any problem getting agreement from all those posters

Zonugal · February 13

Tofystedeth wrote: »

For the individual post, is the archived item the image of the post? Is my reading of that correct?

That is correct, yes.

Jebus314 · February 14

Are there any tools we can use to say get a list of all the people who posted in a thread and message them? Or is the expectation here that you are going through a thread page by page, making a list of users, then PMing those users individually and then somehow recording their consent in a way that can be verified.

Gnizmo · February 14

Heffling wrote: »

I understand the reasoning on why we'd want user consent to move a thread over, but requiring every participant in the thread to consent effectively is a ban on porting threads over.

It is also the only legally secure way of doing it. the EU's laws on this make it very tricky to port our stuff over. It is a whole mess that would require a lawyer be paid more money that it is worth to sort out how to do it any other way.

Expendable · February 14

I'm not sure I understand the individual post part. If say, I wanted to archive a particular post I made, I would need to edit out the timestamp and my own name and signature?

zagdrob · February 14

If we are doing an official archiving with consent, is it ok if someone posts a quote or screenshot from an old thread without consent?

I assume it's no different than quoting a Tweet or Facebook something or whatever but we do have some old running jokes that might never get consent from everyone involved in them just due to time to move over wholesale to the new archive forum.

I guess once old PAF goes down those will be infrequent but there might be some people still quote or reference or have favorite screenshots of good jokes or comments.

amateurhour · February 14

I feel like the point here is that no one is gonna be able to nab "gotcha" screenshots, this is just for 1) phalla/ttrpg kinda stuff and 2) like all time banger posts with 300 awesomes that were life changing and we all agreed or 3) just the dumbest shitposts someone wants to remember for very good reasons, maybe a mid stage draw a horse or something.

I like this. I think this is a really good compromise for people wanting to archive and people not wanting to archive.

A+ Good Job

Solysp · February 14

Basically impossible to archive the thread I most want to then: Fishman's LP of X-Com.

Understandable, but melancholy

amateurhour · February 14

Solysp wrote: »

Basically impossible to archive the thread I most want to then: Fishman's LP of X-Com.

Understandable, but melancholy

you could theoretically still link that thread from archive.org though right?

edit: not on CR, I'm just saying it should be on archive

Anzekay · February 14

Solysp wrote: »

Basically impossible to archive the thread I most want to then: Fishman's LP of X-Com.

Understandable, but melancholy

you could get each individual post of the LP by Fishman archived. it would be more work but it would avoid needing to get consent for every single individual poster, instead just needing Fishman's

aioua · February 14

Expendable wrote: »

I'm not sure I understand the individual post part. If say, I wanted to archive a particular post I made, I would need to edit out the timestamp and my own name and signature?

2nd

is this like

so whoever is judging the posts for inclusion doesn't prejudge based on what they know of the poster?

or are we saving the posts as shopped up anonymous screenshots?

Zonugal · February 14

Jebus314 wrote: »

Are there any tools we can use to say get a list of all the people who posted in a thread and message them? Or is the expectation here that you are going through a thread page by page, making a list of users, then PMing those users individually and then somehow recording their consent in a way that can be verified.

Currently I am unaware of any such tool but I will rope in the tech side of the Transition Team to see if there is anything we can offer to ease this process.

Expendable wrote: »

I'm not sure I understand the individual post part. If say, I wanted to archive a particular post I made, I would need to edit out the timestamp and my own name and signature?

That is correct, yes.

zagdrob wrote: »

If we are doing an official archiving with consent, is it ok if someone posts a quote or screenshot from an old thread without consent?

Users don't need to seek consent for saving individual posts, as long as they scrub any information that could identify the original poster. Effectively the guideline when approaching an individual post is, "Could a former poster be doxxed through the archiving of this post?"

aioua wrote: »

is this like

so whoever is judging the posts for inclusion doesn't prejudge based on what they know of the poster?

or are we saving the posts as shopped up anonymous screenshots?

The latter, yes.

Zonugal · February 14

Okay, here's an example of the process for individual posts:

A few years ago the Social Entropy++ sub-forum did a forum-wide activity in which it sought to determine, through community consensus, the top 50 games of all time. The rules for the activity were:

Each post you make can add 1 game to the definitive list of the best games of all time, and once we hit 50, you may instead replace an existing game with your choice. ...

-You cannot add or replace the same game more than once per person.* If you really think Bubsy needs to be on this list, or Mega Man Battle Network 4 Blue Moon doesn't, you'll have to convince others.

-If you're adding a game with multiple versions (I.e. a game with notable differences based on platform like tetris or a game that's been remastered), please specify the year and platform of release

-When this thread is locked at Page 100 (ish), that's it, no more debating about the top 50 ever, you had your chance.

And the results are such, with included analysis:

Zonugal · February 14

Here's another example!

This is a collection of posts, back-to-back, which represent only a snippet of a very sacred & important moment in Social Entropy++ history: when Henry Kissinger finally DIED

ElJeffe · February 14

What's the mechanism used to determine who the "active" posters in a thread are? Last online within X days, or...? For extremely old threads, there are almost certainly going to be a bunch of people who are no longer here, so coming up with a precise threshold that says, "Well, this person hasn't posted in 5 years, so they're not active, but this person posted once 6 months ago, so they are active" or whatever will probably be necessary at some point if anybody tries to do this.

Zonugal · February 14

ElJeffe wrote: »

What's the mechanism used to determine who the "active" posters in a thread are? Last online within X days, or...? For extremely old threads, there are almost certainly going to be a bunch of people who are no longer here, so coming up with a precise threshold that says, "Well, this person hasn't posted in 5 years, so they're not active, but this person posted once 6 months ago, so they are active" or whatever will probably be necessary at some point if anybody tries to do this.

If they made a single post within a thread, they are an active poster within it.

Elvenshae · February 14

Gotta be honest, this seems like a really convoluted way to just say "No."

And if I'm screenshotting individual posts for archival purposes, that don't I already have my own, uh, dox-friendly archive?

Delzhand · February 14

If you want to archive a thread don't worry about the mechanics of consent right now. I'm trying to figure out what the pool looks like. Just operate on the assumption that I have a way to anonymize a thread for archival. If you _have_ consent from everyone, fantastic, that means it doesn't have to be anonymized. Otherwise, don't worry about it. Let's worry about what belongs in the museum first.

Alt Zavian · February 14

I think consent is very important, even when posting screenshots, especially in today's world where people face legitimate threats and retaliation for their views/identity. That's one reason I requested a self-nuke for my old account. Safety of forum members past and present should be a top priority

Zonugal · February 14

Elvenshae wrote: »

Gotta be honest, this seems like a really convoluted way to just say "No."

And yet its the best way, currently, of respecting the consent of current & previous users of the Penny Arcade forums when it comes to archiving their posts over to Coin Return.

Elvenshae wrote: »

And if I'm screenshotting individual posts for archival purposes, that don't I already have my own, uh, dox-friendly archive?

What folks do within their own personal computer is their purview, but for the health of Coin Return, this is the position the Transition Team has agreed upon.

ElJeffe · February 14

Zonugal wrote: »

ElJeffe wrote: »

What's the mechanism used to determine who the "active" posters in a thread are? Last online within X days, or...? For extremely old threads, there are almost certainly going to be a bunch of people who are no longer here, so coming up with a precise threshold that says, "Well, this person hasn't posted in 5 years, so they're not active, but this person posted once 6 months ago, so they are active" or whatever will probably be necessary at some point if anybody tries to do this.

If they made a single post within a thread, they are an active poster within it.

Oh, so basically any thread that contains a person who has left the forums cannot be archived?

minor incident · February 14

ElJeffe wrote: »

Zonugal wrote: »

ElJeffe wrote: »

What's the mechanism used to determine who the "active" posters in a thread are? Last online within X days, or...? For extremely old threads, there are almost certainly going to be a bunch of people who are no longer here, so coming up with a precise threshold that says, "Well, this person hasn't posted in 5 years, so they're not active, but this person posted once 6 months ago, so they are active" or whatever will probably be necessary at some point if anybody tries to do this.

If they made a single post within a thread, they are an active poster within it.

Oh, so basically any thread that contains a person who has left the forums cannot be archived?

Not without anonymizing it, which, as Delz said...

Delzhand wrote: »

If you want to archive a thread don't worry about the mechanics of consent right now. I'm trying to figure out what the pool looks like. Just operate on the assumption that I have a way to anonymize a thread for archival. If you _have_ consent from everyone, fantastic, that means it doesn't have to be anonymized. Otherwise, don't worry about it. Let's worry about what belongs in the museum first.

ElJeffe · February 14

Ah, missed that post from Delz.

Cool beans.

Delzhand · February 14

Alt Zavian wrote: »

I think consent is very important, even when posting screenshots, especially in today's world where people face legitimate threats and retaliation for their views/identity. That's one reason I requested a self-nuke for my old account. Safety of forum members past and present should be a top priority

Assume that no posts will be associated with an identity without consent. If this works the way I want, you'll be able to look at an archive thread and say "hey that's me!" and replace the anonymized username with yours, either in bulk or individually.

The Lovely Bastard · February 14

this is the only post of mine i want archived, whether i join coin return or not

https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/46987441/#Comment_46987441

Tofystedeth · February 14

I can't think of any posts of mine that are so important they need archived. Other than the best pun I've ever made, which I already screenshotted long ago.

Expendable · February 14

For some reason it didn't occur to me that somebody would submit an individual post of somebody else, so I get that now.

Zek · February 15

I don't really like the idea of migrating any threads over to CoRe, considering all the logistical issues with consent, it doesn't feel worth pursuing to me. I think there are likely tools we could use to archive favorite threads for static hosting someplace, right? SingleFile came up in a cursory search. That way even if not everybody necessarily agrees to it, there is no search indexing, so the potential harm is really minimal.

Led Zepherin · February 15

Delzhand wrote: »

Alt Zavian wrote: »

I think consent is very important, even when posting screenshots, especially in today's world where people face legitimate threats and retaliation for their views/identity. That's one reason I requested a self-nuke for my old account. Safety of forum members past and present should be a top priority

Assume that no posts will be associated with an identity without consent. If this works the way I want, you'll be able to look at an archive thread and say "hey that's me!" and replace the anonymized username with yours, either in bulk or individually.

I think there is a concern about the ability to reverse the anonymized username. There is a real risk that if there is a crosswalk or poor implementation it could be subpoenaed. Some forum members are in a targeted at risk group. And even if they no longer post, we need to do our best as community stewards to ensure their continued safety.

Delzhand · February 15

Maybe it's a moot point. Aside from Fishman's XCOM LP and some phallas nobody has suggested any threads to preserve

initiatefailure · February 15

well... there's always every drawn horse.

Forar · February 15

Anzekay wrote: »

Solysp wrote: »

Basically impossible to archive the thread I most want to then: Fishman's LP of X-Com.

Understandable, but melancholy

you could get each individual post of the LP by Fishman archived. it would be more work but it would avoid needing to get consent for every single individual poster, instead just needing Fishman's

Fishman’s legendary X-Com threads used forum members for the characters. It was, of course, part of what made it so epic.

Would that, for example, require anonymizing said users, in the event they do not consent to their participation being retained?

Like, I’m not trying to GOTCHA on this, simply noting that the efforts to anonymize personal data means that very thread series could run headlong into the issue by its very nature.

“And then Forar was mercifully executed due to risk of Chrysalid infection” carries more emotional weight and history than “And then *Player Anonymized* was mercifully executed due to risk of Chrysalid infection”.

I believe the screenshots are lost/broken links, though in a previous thread Fishman said he might have a copy of them somewhere. Would they also need to be anonymized?

Delzhand · February 15

Welp, having just looked at that thread for the first time, there's no way my anonymization plan would be effective for it.

FyreWulff · February 15

Delzhand wrote: »

Maybe it's a moot point. Aside from Fishman's XCOM LP and some phallas nobody has suggested any threads to preserve

Not to be a downer but the Halo threads I'd want preserved have someone that's passed and someone that got permmed (and has since gone AWOL IRL) so it's not possible to transfer them to CR even if I wanted to poke the rest of TBK into signing back in to sign off on transferring. If that means anything.

I fully agree with the structure/ruleset requirements, btw - only way to do it - but yeah, gonna guess if anybody wanted to, some amount of threads are basically non-starters.

Quantum Tiger · February 15

It would be nice to get an archive of my own posts, mostly for the purpose of nostalgia. I probably would never look at them again but having them would be some comfort I think

RiemannLives · February 15

Quantum Tiger wrote: »

It would be nice to get an archive of my own posts, mostly for the purpose of nostalgia. I probably would never look at them again but having them would be some comfort I think

there are full dumps of the entire forum as it existed in a publicly facing way (ie: no PMs etc..) a couple months ago already readily available. How else would that cool graph generator that shows the percentages of where you post and such work?

Nothing anonymous, and including all data from users who later had their history nuked of course.