People from Story Game Forums

Jeff's picture
Forum: 

Hey all,

I figured we would get a list going of the people from Story Games that have signed up over here since SG is closing.

Just list your name in your reply so we know that you’re here. I’ll keep the updated list below with everyone’s name on it. If you changed your name you could let folks know your old SG forum name (if you’d like) so we will know who you are.

If your not from SG, you could introduce yourself to the folks from SG who read this post.

Ok, here’s the list:

Jeff (Jeff_Slater)
Hopeless_Wanderer
BeePeeGee
Tod (AsIf)
ffliz
GuySrinivasan
komradebob
Aik
Kenny_J
Neurotrash
Chiarina
Arkades (miedvied)
Paul T.
SquidLord
Nathan H.
Two orcs
Billy
shimrod
Corvinity
James Mullen
DeReel
David Artman
Teylen
Christopher Weeks
E.T.Smith
Jeph
Empowermint
Qo

Paul T.'s picture

Would it really be that egregious to create a mirror of the site somewhere? My impression was that the SG moderation team would be fine with it so long as it wasn’t interactive (not an active forum, in other words).

webtech's picture

At one point I suggested making a copy of it here, but disabling comments in that subforum. I believe that still got a no because it indirectly would benefit traffic on this site, and that would give me an unfair advantage over any other S-Gers who were starting their own alternate destinations. That's just a theory, mind you, but it jibes with my understanding of James' understated altruism, non-profiting, and fairness.

Paul T.'s picture

I can certainly see that argument, but does it really outweigh the value of all the content that so many people put so much time into creating, and that will be lost as a result? I feel like the contributors of that content should have a right to at least a strong opinion on the matter. We are its authors, after all.

As for lending an unfair advantage to a forum, that would imply that so long as the hypothetical new/sub forum had its own URL and no obvious link to an existing forum, there would be no objections. Right?

Silmenume's picture

Hello,

I understand that the curators at the former Story-Games feel they have accomplished what they set out to do, have made their mark and wish to let others have their say. There is something very admirable in that decision and action. Someone even used the word Altruism, yet I'm not really seeing altruism in the willful benign loss of hard won insights and accumulation of wisdom and ideas. If the curators no long wish to steer conversations and bear the heavy and frequently thankless burden of moderation more power to them. The concern that to let the library of accumulated thought to continue to exist would somehow choke off opportunities of fledgling discussion boards flies in the face of millenia of Western academic practice and history. Its like letting the Library of Alexandria fall into decay and dust simply because someone else is building a university. That new "university" would benefit from the continued existence of the “old” library as would all the "students". Why send everyone back to reinventing the wheel? To freely make available the accumulated knowledge/wisdom is altruistic. To allow everyone the same access is to put everyone on equal footing. Anything less would be a terrible loss for those actually contributed and those in the future who have not yet read what was thought about before them.

Bless the curators of Story-Games for putting the site together and their hard work over the years, but letting everyone's writings disappear into the destructive haze of time, is, to me, not the height of altruism, however well meant their intentions. It is purposeful, however benign, destruction of knowledge and to me that is a tragic loss for everyone. No one comes out for the better in that outcome.

Best,

Jay

Billy's picture

Hi friends,

I dropped in on the ArchiveBot IRC channel and briefly explained the situation. They have added Story-Games to their crawler pipeline, so the site should be archived to the Wayback Machine (Archive.org) sometime in the near future. This was one of the options that James approved for long-term archiving.

I'm not sure how long the process would take, but I'd expect if you check back to this page in a week or two you should see all the threads archived.

Paul T.'s picture

That's great news, Billy. Thank you for doing that!

For the sake of being thorough, let me know if I'm right or wrong on any of these:

1. All of the Story Games threads will end up archived, as a result. It will be possible to read them for the foreseeable future (?).

2. It will NOT be possible to search the archive in any way (you will need the URL of any thread you wish to read in order to find it in the archive).

3. It will NOT be possible to use Categories (e.g. "Best of Story Games"), lists of various sorts, or to find threads by author.

Is that about right?

Billy's picture

I believe it will archive all public-facing sections of the website (i.e., any page you could access without logging in). That should include the front page (showing recent threads), user pages (e.g., like this, but more up to date) and category pages (like this).

I don't think the search function will work (since I assume it depends on the forum's back-end server, which will not be preserved). So you would not be able to search by keywords - for that, you would be better off searching the raw threads from Jeph's archive.

As for the forseeable future, it should be up as long as the Internet Archive continues to exist. Your guess is as good as mine, but it is certainly their mission to preserve the archive for as long as possible.

Silmenume's picture

Hi everyone,

I've came here from Story-Games and before that The Forge all with the same screen name - Silmenume - for ease of searching purposes. While I have posted here for about a year, longer maybe, I've never officially introduced myself here. I did not find Story-Games until very near its demise but I liked the people there and am heartened that so many chose to migrate to here. Thank you Tod for managing this site and making it more than your typical chat site. With great appreciation and deep thanks - well done!

Best,

Jay

Billy's picture

I meant to do this a while ago, but finally got around to it. I generated a list of all the Story-Games threads by number, author, title, and date. So if you remember a thread's title or author, you can use this list to find its number and then use that to look up the archived version.

Here's the list: http://bemurkled.ca/storygamesindex.txt

DeReel's picture

ACCESS BY URL

"If people want a sliiiightly more readable version of a thread, browse to https://jeffschecter.github.io/storygames/storygames/{THREADNUMVER}.html.

Eg:
https://jeffschecter.github.io/storygames/storygames/1.html

Style sheets, avatars, and so on are still broken, but it's a bit nicer."
Jeph

FINDING A THREAD
"http://bemurkled.ca/storygamesindex.txt
I ran a script on the archive to make a list of threads with the number, author, title, and date. So you can Ctrl-F on the file to find a certain author or keyword, and then use the number to find it in the archive."
Billy

GETTING YOUR OWN SG ARCHIVE
"If you want your very own searchable archive, here's what you can do:
1) Go to https://github.com/jeffschecter/storygames
2) Press the big green button that says "Code" (screenshot)
3) Select "Download ZIP" and save the archive on your computer
"
Billy

SEARCHING THE ARCHIVE
The hardest part is finding the software that's right for you for the search : I went with Recoll because it has a GUI and it's simple and works on Linux, and I can screen probable results with the title and first lines, then open the best candidate threads, all this without browsing, only read and click.
In any case, it should take around 1/2 hour to try various softwares and find your size.

WITH NOTEPAD ++
"4) Unzip the files to a folder that is convenient for you
5) Download and install Notepad++ on your computer
6) Run Notepad++ and press Ctrl F to open the search dialogue
7) Go to the third tab, "Find in Files"
8) Where it says "Directory", press the [...] button and navigate to the folder where you unzipped the archive
9) Where it says "Filters", make sure it says *.*
10) Find what: put whatever you want to search for (example)
11) Press Find All
It will search for a while, then bring up a list at the bottom of the screen of all the hits, sorted by filename. Double-clicking on the results will bring up the file where the result was found."
Billy

WITH RECOLL
4) install Recoll (or similar searcher)
5) Tell it where the Zip file is (Configure Index > Browse to folder)
6) search words (or play with advance search, customized outputs, etc.) Et voilà !

DeReel's picture

...is a healthy way of passing time but let me see : I am mining around 30 threads a day of which approximately 5 seem valuable to me and I am only at... thread 19430. Woaw... that means years of digging. I'd rather get me my own personal archive. That's for the mining part.

My first impulse is to volunteer to do searches on demand, but getting the archive and browsing it on one's computer is so easy (what's 174 Mo nowadays) that there's really no point in anyone not doing it themself.

The most "work" there's to do is we can reconstruct an index for the things we expect to be useful such as we began in the thread there. By saying "we", notice I am trying to enroll some of you.

If you wonder what's the point in indexing old games and magazines in the storage room of the club, I'll tell you :
1° accurate history of the hobby deflates myths, tells marketing and fads from useful principles and perspectives (Yes, I am looking at you, Forge...)
2° putting up a desk (index) for all sort of old game parts. In a few days, I find more precise input for my own game in a handful of threads than, say, in 1 hour of Design Panelcast or hours of Actual Play feed. I'd say it's 50/50 with actual playtest, only I have much less guessing work to do, because each piece of information is defined through 3-5 clearly identifiable perspectives (=known story gamers). Of course, it's a bit dryer than play.
also 3° although a routine in itself, it's a nice break from the other routine.

Now, studying the boxes, I see
- around 15K that are mostly shootouts (from 3 to 30 ko) that I will notice only if they have an explicit title of being index pages
- around 6K that are from what I see mostly chit chat (from 30 to 100ko) that I'll cross reference with thread titles to see if there's something of note
- around 1,7K that are long enough that, whatever their title, I'll take a look at them, rule out those that are mainly uploaded pictures, and mine the rest.

This way I can end a first draft of an index in 60 days. Things being what they are, that means 6 month from now, and that means August. Yay !

webtech's picture

It looks like Jeff's github version got truncated. Like 95% of it.
So that leaves us with the Wayback Machine and @Rickard's copy.

webtech's picture

A good thing, redundancy, which being redundancy, is a good thing.

DeReel's picture

The archives are not heavy, so there will always be enough copies of it.

I guess Rickard's got the code, but used the space / money for another project. Making the archives easily accessible this long was super cool from him in any case !

If the display page is lost, I will go back to making bouquet of pages that interest me as a storygame history enthousiast.

Going back to this halted project will also be a good measurement of how much I have changed these last 3 years... WAIT ! holy mother of milk ! It's only been a year in fact ! Now I know I have something to learn there, both about games, covid times, and my trajectory during this year.

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