Because the old board is now run by (presumably) yuku.com, I was wondering if there’s any way we can ensure that those threads stay online.  We seem to refer to them quite a lot and they’re always very illuminating, with a lot of well-researched replies. I assume that if yuku decided to close them down, they would all be lost? or how does it work?

It’s entirely up to Yuku. I no longer have any control over them. The accounts are long expired.

The main reason for moving to new forums is that I have complete ownership and control (as far as the limits of the software allow). We’re not held hostage by the whims of a company.

Is there any way of archiving the contents?

languagehat - 01 May 2011 05:32 AM

Is there any way of archiving the contents?

I’m sure there’s a way as this is after all exactly what the Wayback Machine does when it archives old sites. Whether the task is feasible when one is limited by time and resources is another matter.

No. I went through that when I tried to switch. Yuku made it impossible to archive contents precisely because they didn’t want you to move the board. It’s policies like that that caused me to move.

I don’t think the Waybackmachine archives database-driven sites like Yuku. It only does html-based sites.

Interestingly the Wayback Machine can archive boards like Yuku but the site has only three snapshots from June and July 2008 at present. Clicking on the June 16th 2008 snapshot brings up WordOrigins, all 15 pages are accessible and clicking on a topic heading does bring up any particular thread, with the distinction that the thread is being accessed through the “liveweb” but will be added to the archive shortly.)

Whether more snapshots for previous years are going to be added is a moot point (in the UK sense) but one can only hope.

Interesting.  Speaking entirely out of ignorance, is there anyone here with the know-how to archive the rest of it?  Or does it cost real money?

You would need access to Yuku’s database. And that ain’t gonna happen. The old archives are what they are. We can do nothing to change that.

Search is still defunct on the old board. I’ve submitted a fault report over there, we’ll see how it goes.

Wait.  I just did several searches in the last few days.  Did I miss something?

This one is working for you?

Advanced search

I get 0 result whatever I put in, even for terms I know are there. Simple search brings no better results (ie the search box for each individual page).

No.  It does not work.  Let me find out what I did…

I go sometimes here and it works for me. 

I enter my search terms into the window at the upper right, where it asks: ”search forum”. 

If you have any other info, please post…

Sometimes, I conduct a google advanced search, with the field: ‘Search within a site or domain:’ populated with: wordoriginsorg.yuku.com and it works well, also.

sobiest - 18 July 2011 05:13 PM

I go sometimes here and it works for me. 

I enter my search terms into the window at the upper right, where it asks: ”search forum”. 

If you have any other info, please post…

No, that doesn ‘t work for me. For instance entering spinster as a search term gives a null result even though the topic is plainly visible at the foot of the page.

Your Google suggestion does come up trumps though, serving up the spinster topic in the blink of an eye. Thanks, sobiest!

The search box at sobiest’s link works for me, but that will only search the 19th archive.  The good news is that the full-archive search at http://wordoriginsorg.yuku.com/ appears to have been fixed; at least, it is working again for me.