Should OSF have an archive/"Old work" section?

I for one am thrilled that this forum is off to a very promising start with lots of new work being posted and the usual interesting discussions getting going. I have noticed some cross-posting (duplicate posting?) over at OSW of the same work but it seems some of us are hedging our bets and keeping a foot in each door as we try out OSF during this initial period. I am rapidly becoming disillusioned with OSW as I experience my own technical problems, and am seriously considering abandoning that site altogether. It's too bad because if you want eyeballs for your work that site was great but maybe someday this site will attract a much bigger audience (although I like the more intimate camaraderie that's been fostered here in this initial phase).

I wish I could post more often but that's always been a problem of mine, which is that I'll participate in spurts and really get into posting and responding, and then burn out and not do anything for months or even years while I either focus on my other hobbies or just plug away at 1/6 without sharing anything (as has been the case lately). I've found it takes me a huge effort to photograph my work and then try to carefully craft coherent and interesting (I hope) threads describing my work and processes and methods. Over at OSW I haven't posted that much over the years, but I put a lot of effort into almost every thread I started and shared, and before that I did the same at 6thD and SAG when I was active there too.

Which brings me to my point (I know, I know, get to the point, right? ): I'm genuinely concerned that all that hard work I put into those posts over at OSW might get lost, with all their technical issues and with people leaving etc. Some people are saying "let it die" but what happens to all those posts if VS shuts it all down? For me those are a record of my work, my "legacy" (sounds pompous I know) and I'd hate to lose it if that site goes under. So, my idea is: perhaps we should start an archive section where members can re-post the original threads of old work so that we have a record of stuff we did over there on this site, or at least some of the most important/meaningful work we want to archive. It wouldn't have to crowd out the General Talk section (most of you have probably seen all my old work and aren't interested in seeing it again), but for those who are interested it would be a way for us to check out each other's past work. Unfortunately we would lose all the member's comments from the original OSW threads but at least we could have the original project posts and for those who haven't seen those old threads on this site you can always add new replies.

What do you think? Is it too much work? It would be self-directed so mods/admins don't need to actively archive stuff for us (like they used to do at 6th D).

Interested to hear any and all constructive thoughts.

#discussion

I am sympathetic to the sentiment, and would like to see what others have to say about it. In some "category" threads (e.g., funnies, useful items) there has been plenty of recycling, and that is fine. I do not have anything against reposting old threads and images here; you might take the opportunity to edit, abridge, re-emphasize your original presentation, and the rest of us might get a chance of re-viewing and re-evaluating the work. As for whether and how to set up and maintain a separate archive section, housekeeping is on the agenda, but it might take some more time to sort; for the time being everything is under General Talk. One way of marking such threads ("topics") as a specific sort of thing -- at least for now -- might be to add "Archive" before their title, the same way that we add "Product Review" or "New Product" before others.

I like the idea of saving all of the cool projects that might be lost on OSW but I don't like "archive" threads because you can't add further posts to them. A new member should be able respond to any thread they like, not just the most recent ones.

I, for one, would love to see past projects posted over here; it doesn’t matter to me if I’ve seen it before. There was so much great stuff that has already been lost, or long out of sight, what with the Photobucket debacle, or the OSW’s own gallery issues. We have some new names here (whether they are truly new, or folks just decided to choose a new moniker, I couldn’t say), and if they truly are new, those older posts/projects would be new to them.

TGF, I would love to see your Eowyn and Aragorn rebuilds/mods posted here. Those projects were amazing; and if you wouldn’t mind, some new, and/or, additional notes to especially Aragorn would be most helpful to me, and others (I have that ACI Aragorn and I still haven’t swapped out the body or worked on his hair to make it the amazing figure I remember yours turning out to be).

I agree with shazzdan about the inability to comment in the Archive section, too. But here’s my thoughts on having too many sub-categories this early on in this stage of the site: as GubernatorFan alluded to, it would take some time to do the site maintenance required to put different sub-categories together. And as many of us know, right now GF is the creator, owner, and sole boss-man running the show, without any additional admin help. As this site continues to grow, and we get more and more members, sooner or later, he’s going to need help (I am not computer savvy myself, which is one of the reasons I’ve pretty much abandoned OSW — too often of late we were required to try to find some technical means of correcting all the glitches and bugs that not even the people who have more access seem to be able to figure out). I’ve been doing my best to help build this site by searching for and posting New Product threads as much as possible, but I’m only able to do so right now due to the chronic illness which has been kicking my butt and keeping me from being able to work; once that changes, and I’m hoping all these doctor visits and new treatments will make that happen, I won’t have the time to search for and post as much. Others will have to help out.

Sorry if this is getting too long, but what I’m saying is this: GF is only one guy, and we are still a small community; as we continue to grow, and if we want to start breaking things down into sub-categories (whether in the style of sites like OSW, Freaks, whatever), that’s going to require a lot more hands-on work, and volunteers are going to have to step up, or be invited, to help GF build and maintain that.

I hope this rambling post makes sense; I haven’t been sleeping well, and I’m fairly exhausted...
Apologies if there are odd words, misspellings, or things missing (stupid spell check is the worst).

That is a really good idea,

However, some of us, me included, lost all the pics from our old threads in the Photobucket debacle. I do have the originals, but, it would be a ton of work to resurrect everything. Personally, I just want to leave OSW entirely in the past.

Others are welcome to post theirs and I'll be happy to see it.

CHEERS!

The "archive" label placed at the beginning of a thread ("topic") title I had in mind would be simply to identify the thread ("topic") as a certain sort of posting, without affecting members' ability to respond to it. The "Archive" section, unless there are constraints imposed by the system (in which case we can use/call it something else), I also imagine could be left "open" for comments. Perhaps old terminology/practice from the older forum is creeping in and distorting the issue.

Sounds ok,

What did used to get my goat on OSW was newbies necroposting. A label denoting the thread as archive would help in that respect. An entire section would make it less obvious for newbies to find though, meaning they would be less likely to necropost if it didn't come up first search. Do we even have a search function!?

CHEERS!

@Tank Girl, I can identify with what you said about posting in spurts then burning out, on the creative and social.

tankgirlfuzzy wrote:I've found it takes me a huge effort to photograph my work and then try to carefully craft coherent and interesting (I hope) threads describing my work and processes and methods.

Very much so; if I take a bunch of photos with rearranged scenes, sometimes find when editing that none of the photos of a particular configuration are good. (All are grainy; someone's looking away from the camera. Oops this looks like her hand's on the other girl's bum, and while amusing out of context that's not how I want to portray the character.)

tankgirlfuzzy wrote:For me those are a record of my work, my "legacy" (sounds pompous I know) and I'd hate to lose it if that site goes under.

I get this. I posted all my beginner work on Figurvore before it went hidden to non-members. That's why I started a blog, to re-post particular things I wanted to share with the world. (Never mind that I haven't gotten to blogging many of them yet...) But it's easier to attract more readership on a forum than a blog.

shazzdan wrote:I like the idea of saving all of the cool projects that might be lost on OSW but I don't like "archive" threads because you can't add further posts to them. A new member should be able respond to any thread they like, not just the most recent ones.

+1. I found OSW's archive system to be a turn-off. All topics in one place is confusing to this newbie. Below are threads nicely organised by genre, but oh wait, everything in them is old and we can't comment on them.

Re: subcategories, Figurvore has them and people almost always post in the appropriate one. Maybe because it's a small community but it requires very little moderation. The difference is that members can post to the subcategories, rather than mods redirecting all old posts as a normal part of forum maintenance.

Rogerbee wrote:What did used to get my goat on OSW was newbies necroposting.

I agree and disagree with this. Seeing old posts reincarnated in general doesn’t bother me, but asking questions to a person who vanished a decade earlier is a little fruitless. It only takes a couple seconds to find out when someone was last active.

I just go with the flow here.

You what they say.

"When in Rome . . ."

I kind of like this idea and also share TGF's concerns about the possibility of losing old work on the OSW.

I was contemplating whether or not I should post some of my old works here (possibly with a few re-shoots), as I've not made anything new lately, only a few simple bashes. But I was afraid people would get tired of seeing them again.

At the same time, I wouldn't want to wish more work/dedication upon the Admin/GF, as he's already done such a noble and selfless deed setting up and maintaining OSF.

Fox915 wrote:I kind of like this idea and also share TGF's concerns about the possibility of losing old work on the OSW.

I was contemplating whether or not I should post some of my old works here (possibly with a few re-shoots), as I've not made anything new lately, only a few simple bashes. But I was afraid people would get tired of seeing them again.

At the same time, I wouldn't want to wish more work/dedication upon the Admin/GF, as he's already done such a noble and selfless deed setting up and maintaining OSF.

--

Go for it.

Nothing ventured. Nothing gained.

Who dares wins.

Stryker2011 wrote:

Rogerbee wrote:What did used to get my goat on OSW was newbies necroposting.

I agree and disagree with this. Seeing old posts reincarnated in general doesn’t bother me, but asking questions to a person who vanished a decade earlier is a little fruitless. It only takes a couple seconds to find out when someone was last active.

That was the thing, the newbies didn't know that or didn't care as they just wanted to boost their post count to get into the Marketplace.

CHEERS!

I think it would be fine to re-post old work, perhaps slightly streamlined/edited. I was thinking of what I would do with my own. There might be some text and images that I might forego, while prioritizing the better/more substantive ones.

Rogerbee wrote:Sounds ok,

What did used to get my goat on OSW was newbies necroposting. A label denoting the thread as archive would help in that respect. An entire section would make it less obvious for newbies to find though, meaning they would be less likely to necropost if it didn't come up first search. Do we even have a search function!?

What is even more annoying than resurrecting an old thread is a new thread being started about a subject that has already been covered. It is far better to add to an old, existing thread than to start a new thread about the same thing. It makes organisation easier, it makes searches easier, it cuts down on thread clutter, and it bumps some older threads to give them a new lease on life.

Reposting old work here is not going to help because people are still using free image hosting sites. Those sites can close down or change their policies just like Photobucket did and all those photos will be lost all over again. The advantage of using OSW is that it has its own photo storage capacity. How many free image hosting companies have been around for as long as OSW? I would love to see some of the older projects on OSW reproduced here because I missed a lot of them the first time around, but we can't delude ourselves into thinking that the images here are going to be any more permanent than they are on OSW. Based on historical evidence, any images hosted by OSW will be around for a lot longer than any images posted here.

One of the reasons why I have an Etsy store is to give me a reliable image host. It costs me $0.20 to list an item and that 20 cents also gives me the capacity to store 10 photos. Even if I never sell the item, it is still worth my while just to have a reliable place to store my photos that can be hotlinked with no problems. Obviously it isn't foolproof because Etsy could go bankrupt but it has been growing for 13 years straight and is likely to be around for a while.


More of my work can be found at One Sixth Arsenal

Thanks all for all the many thoughtful replies! There's definitely a range and diversity of opinion here, but it seems like for now the tentative(?) consensus is that people are generally in favor of seeing old work/posts from OSW and other sites, but for now we should merely identify them as such in the title and post them in the General Talk forum. For now we (meaning GubernatorFan really!   ) won't create a new "archive" forum but perhaps down the road one can be created and posts will be moved there and also "new" archive threads can be created there after that. And, to address people's concerns about archive threads being usually locked from future commenting like on other sites, we can create the forum such that those archive threads can still be commented on. Does that sound about right for a summary?

My biggest concern is that I didn't want to inundate this General Talk forum with a bunch of my old threads, most of which the current membership have probably seen. By creating the archive section members can go there if they want to see other members' old work, and the General Talk section will remain uncluttered by old stuff and more about current work and new products/issues. In other words, I just don't want to irritate people by crowding the first page with over a dozen of my own work threads. I know I can choose to spread it out, but knowing me I like to make a project of such things and would love to just do it all at once.

I'll hold off for now until there's a bit more clarity, but I do want to thank GF for taking the bull by the horns and making this site a reality! You deserve much credit and all our thanks for taking this on! (where's that thumbs up emoticon anyway? )

Stryker2011 wrote:
TGF, I would love to see your Eowyn and Aragorn rebuilds/mods posted here. Those projects were amazing; and if you wouldn’t mind, some new, and/or, additional notes to especially Aragorn would be most helpful to me, and others (I have that ACI Aragorn and I still haven’t swapped out the body or worked on his hair to make it the amazing figure I remember yours turning out to be).
...
I’ve been doing my best to help build this site by searching for and posting New Product threads as much as possible, but I’m only able to do so right now due to the chronic illness which has been kicking my butt and keeping me from being able to work; once that changes, and I’m hoping all these doctor visits and new treatments will make that happen, I won’t have the time to search for and post as much. Others will have to help out.
...

Thanks so much for the kind words Stryker2011! I've actually been planning to update/expand my two Aragorns (soon to be three or four!) so I will post on it, whether incorporating the original threads or not. Not sure when though as I too am going through some health issues which are actually preventing me from really working on my projects at the moment. So frustrating... I hope you recover/feel better soon. I for one really appreciate your work in support of this site!  

shazzdan wrote:Reposting old work here is not going to help because people are still using free image hosting sites. Those sites can close down or change their policies just like Photobucket did and all those photos will be lost all over again. The advantage of using OSW is that it has its own photo storage capacity. How many free image hosting companies have been around for as long as OSW? I would love to see some of the older projects on OSW reproduced here because I missed a lot of them the first time around, but we can't delude ourselves into thinking that the images here are going to be any more permanent than they are on OSW. Based on historical evidence, any images hosted by OSW will be around for a lot longer than any images posted here.
...

I agree shazzdan that nothing is guaranteed or completely safe. But for me it's at least as much about the text/history/background/how-to/etc as it is about the pics.

I actually ponied up for the photobucket ransom (I know, I'm a sucker ) because I felt it was worth it. It's either about spending time (to re-upload all the pics) or money, and time right now is more valuable to me than the admittedly exorbitant $400 they charge. I've gone all in on this hobby over the past 18 years, so I'm viewing that as just another fixed cost, not unlike the fixed costs in RC flying of AMA dues or club memberships.

But for me, more than the pics hosting, it's about how I describe my work, how I present it with the carefully chosen pics, how I describe my process and methods. Posting these threads has become another outlet for me to express myself besides actually customizing/creating the figures/dios/vehicles/planes. I don't use Facebook or other social media, which is how most people seem to like to express themselves, so these sites and my RC sites are it.

So, being able to put my archive work over here is just another way to share it and have a "backup" copy of my words/pics/work on the internet. Hope that makes sense!

tankgirlfuzzy wrote:By creating the archive section members can go there if they want to see other members' old work.

How do we know whether we want to see it until we actually see it? I never the visit the archive sections on any other site unless an archived thread turns up in a search result. Just put everything in General until the number of posts becomes unwieldy. Then think about subforums.

Tank Girl, your old work (and everyone else's) is welcome here. I didn't think shazzdan was necessarily opposing that, and he has actually confirmed it.

If there are going to be subforums then most threads belong in one of these two catagories: "Commercial stuff" and "Customised stuff". The first is where all the product announcements, reviews, and collection threads go. The second is where and kitbashes and customised stuff go. "General" is for everything else, like this thread. Three subforums would be manageable and encompass a broad enough scope to not confuse people.

That isn't such a bad idea,

I can see that Guber, DFC and I are going to have to have a bit of a pow wow sometime.

CHEERS!

Those three categories should see fairly even activity too. There is nothing worse than a site with lots of subforums but only one or two of them get the majority of the traffic.

Sounds good to me, just have to see what the other two think.

CHEERS!

I am not thrilled by the idea of subforums, as I have always enjoyed seeing postings across the whole range of our hobby. That said, I recognized the need for streamlining and organization. One thing I have been missing from the old forum are the tags that we could add to new topics (threads). After working my way through the Forumotion help files, the easiest solution to that appears to be the insertion of hashtags on the first post in a topic. For example, #military or #civilian or #fantasy and so on. Keep that in mind when creating new threads. If you have created a thread (topic) already, you can go back and insert them by editing your first post. The moderators and I will try to go through existing threads to do this -- as much to help sort things out as to test it out.
You can then search via the hashtags and you can even set up hashtags to follow in Profile.