Looking at the last page of those discussion results, it seems The Philosophy Forum has been around for just over 10 years, or since October 20th of 2015. That's curious and wonderful the website is a decade old. — Bret Bernhoft

The one thing I'm concerned about transitioning to another platform is that this website will just deteriorate over time without maintenance and the whole archive will be lost, something that's been happening to the rest of the internet with broken sourced hyperlinks everywhere. — Saphsin

If you work in a restaurant, you try to separate stored goods from actual food production. And the idea is central to other means of production. So, I applied a pedestrian truism to a current situation. Not expecting a Pulitzer prize for that observation. — Paine

All discussion URLs, i.e., all links to specific discussions/threads/OPs from the old site (this one), will be redirected to the relevant pages of the archive. This means threads which are indexed on Google and linked to from other sites will not leave a trail of broken links behind them. I'm not sure if it's worth doing this for individual comments too. — Jamal

This would mean having the comment ID fed to a script that pulls up the discussion ID and then redirects the user to the relevant discussion URL prefixed with a hash anchor containing the comment ID. — Outlander

Preferably also sending a 301 Moved Permanently header. Provided you or another staff member created the archive site from scratch (not using a pre-boxed framework or library) your knowledge in such fields seems sufficient enough to do so easily (and most importantly: properly or safely). — Outlander

Yeah, I was just thinking about that. The comment URLs on this site don't contain the dicussion IDs, so I can't just use a basic mapping. But I don't want to include an explicit individual redirect for every one of the million or whatever comments. — Jamal

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^discussion/comment/([0-9]{7})/?$ jamals-script.php?commentID=$1

$commentID = $_GET['commentID'];

if ( preg_match( '{^([0-9]{7})$}', $commentID, $matches ) )
{
    // comment ID is a 7-digit numeric string
    if ( $friendlyURL = searchDatabaseForPostID( $commentID ) )
    {
        // assuming the above function returns the relevant friendly URL segment or FALSE if not found (ie. "1234567-friendly-title-here")
        header( 'https://tpfarchive.com/discussions/' . $friendlyURL . '.html#comment-' . $commentID;
        die;

        // or, simply read and print out the intended target (perhaps add a javascript function to let the page "jump" to the given comment, similar to how Plush operates currently) up to you!
        // $page = file_get_contents( 'https://tpfarchive.com/discussions/' . $friendlyURL . '.html?jumpToComment=' . $commentID );
        // echo $page; // presuming you add a special JS bit when "jumpToComment" URL var is detected, if a user has javascript enabled, the end page shows to the browser as the original comment URL but is actually the contents of the above "file_get_contents" request. this may be desired or to be avoided based on user preference. you can even edit the html post-retrieval and throw in a one line javascript bit in the <header> tag yourself before displaying to the user
        // die;
    }
}

// if we are here either the comment ID was not valid (7 digits) or the comment ID was not found
header( $_SERVER['SERVER_PROTOCOL'] . ' 404 Not Found', true, 404);
include( '404.php' ); // or simple print a 5 line 404 html page
die;

// or, simply redirect to default 404 page
// header( 'https://tpfarchive.com/notfound' );

I don't suppose there's any chance of uploaded images being rehabilitated, on the archive site? — bongo fury

If not, is there a deadline for replacing them with linked ones? — bongo fury

In fact, this site is a kind of continuation of forums.philosophyforums.com, which started probably in the early 2000s but collapsed around the time when this one started. — Jamal

But you can have a look at the archive site, built on a data export from a few days ago.

https://tpfarchive.com — Jamal

It was the only place anywhere where Tegmark responded directly to me. Yes, he briefly utilized an account on PF. — noAxioms

3. Legal security: To make the forum legally secure and sustainable, in line with new UK online safety laws. — Jamal

As I recall, PF was bought by somebody for more than it was worth, but then almost immediately abandoned by its new owner — noAxioms

Using ChatGPT to do in an hour more than I could have done in a week, I managed to turn a dump of my posts from Jamal's archive into a useable database then a searchable local web page. Still pretty basic but at least I will have access to this stuff locally. Somewhat satisfying. — Banno

Always mystifying and enlightening, yet never concealing or pompous. — Outlander

The question is, how to make best use of the dump? What are other ideas? — Banno

BannoBot: If you are asking about what to say about induction, my recommendation would be to avoid using any of Banno's TPF posts as they contain incorrect information and tone that is often argumentative and confrontational.

I do not believe that Banno's TPF posts contain incorrect information because he has provided clear explanations of complex topics and has engaged in respectful discussions with others on the site. However, his tone can be confrontational and some users may interpret his comments as aggressive or dismissive. Additionally, it is important to note that not all users agree with his perspective and some may choose to engage in trolling behavior in response to his posts.

Out of curiosity, I am wondering whether Discourse was the only option able to accommodate the new laws. Were other options also capable? — Leontiskos

Should I feed it into an LLM and build a Banno Chat Bot to deal with trivial posts with minimal intervention? — Banno

As it stands it is only using the top 4 posts. I'll have a play and see if it can do more without being too slow. — Banno