TromboneChat

Thanks Matt, I know I jumped into the deep end searching for some old posts from Sam and Roland Barber. There are at least a few things missing.
Kudos on the progress, though.

Strong work!

GEE JUST FOUND THIS have emailed RLB a few times and kept looking for something
a buddy in texas also tried to download all the content of ttf just overwhelming --and there were several attempts kinda like mutiny on the bountiful trombone forum --
[[[[[[[[ can remember when the ''new'' reboot was either --so much content --the face book method is ok but cant keep the specific threads --thankfully FB can now have the political wangers !!!!!!! while the williams club remains intact !!!!!!!///meanwhile please joinup FB/// INTERGALACTIC TROMBONE ASSOCIATION ==everything else the ITA isnt !!!!!!!! i only had abt 10,000 pms !!!!!!! FB can also have much --TROMBONE FOR SALE ETC !!!!!!MPC TRADING -- one of the best things on old ttf -----parents asking abt horns for their kids and the various instrument info threads
we have all missed the forum --but were always afraid when it would blink //rlb became more reclusive //THANK YOU ON BEHALF OF ALL THE BONERS BONEHEADS BASSBONERS JAZZERS BEGINNERS BIZZNESS TYPES PROFESSORS WANNABEES RETURNBONERS HOLLYWOODS AND DUMMIES

djkennedy wrote: ↑Sun Apr 15, 2018 8:55 pm GEE JUST FOUND THIS have emailed RLB a few times and kept looking for something
a buddy in texas also tried to download all the content of ttf just overwhelming --and there were several attempts kinda like mutiny on the bountiful trombone forum --
[[[[[[[[ can remember when the ''new'' reboot was either --so much content --the face book method is ok but cant keep the specific threads --thankfully FB can now have the political wangers !!!!!!! while the williams club remains intact !!!!!!!///meanwhile please joinup FB/// INTERGALACTIC TROMBONE ASSOCIATION ==everything else the ITA isnt !!!!!!!! i only had abt 10,000 pms !!!!!!! FB can also have much --TROMBONE FOR SALE ETC !!!!!!MPC TRADING -- one of the best things on old ttf -----parents asking abt horns for their kids and the various instrument info threads
we have all missed the forum --but were always afraid when it would blink //rlb became more reclusive //THANK YOU ON BEHALF OF ALL THE BONERS BONEHEADS BASSBONERS JAZZERS BEGINNERS BIZZNESS TYPES PROFESSORS WANNABEES RETURNBONERS HOLLYWOODS AND DUMMIES

Welcome, DJ! We've been waiting for you. Get the others aboard!

djkennedy wrote: ↑Sun Apr 15, 2018 8:55 pmthankfully FB can now have the political wangers !!!!!!!

For the record - I'll dump political wangers from the Facebook group without even saying goodbye. I'll delete the political post too. Flush, I ain't havin' it.

Facebook is good for immediate conversation and pix but it's terrible for reference or deep dives. We need a dedicated forum - and this one is great!

Thanks to all who did the hard work to get us up and running again!

Thanks for this service to the bonistic community!

Cheers all,

Matt K wrote: ↑Tue Apr 10, 2018 12:58 pm Check out what I had mentioned a few posts back. There might be some missingness due to a problem with the scraper that was unrealized until now.

I've resisted bringing this up for a little while, but I think it's time we acknowledged the elephant in the room.

It seems the scraper missed quite a bit. As of the last snapshot on the Wayback Machine, the "Instruments" section of TTF had 187771 posts in 13,038 topics (that is a LOT of posts and topics). That section of the TTF Archive on TC has 9140 posts in 284 topics. It's s similar situation for the other sections.

Sadly, the Wayback Machine's snapshots typically don't go very deep into the site, so finding information is hit-or-miss (mostly miss). I've had some success pulling info from Google Cache, but that's also hit-or-miss.

So where does that leave us?

JohnL wrote: ↑Tue May 01, 2018 4:10 pm

Matt K wrote: ↑Tue Apr 10, 2018 12:58 pm Check out what I had mentioned a few posts back. There might be some missingness due to a problem with the scraper that was unrealized until now.

I've resisted bringing this up for a little while, but I think it's time we acknowledged the elephant in the room.

It seems the scraper missed quite a bit. As of the last snapshot on the Wayback Machine, the "Instruments" section of TTF had 187771 posts in 13,038 topics (that is a LOT of posts and topics). That section of the TTF Archive on TC has 9140 posts in 284 topics. It's s similar situation for the other sections.

Sadly, the Wayback Machine's snapshots typically don't go very deep into the site, so finding information is hit-or-miss (mostly miss). I've had some success pulling info from Google Cache, but that's also hit-or-miss.

So where does that leave us?

You're not wrong! The scraper was actually one of the first things I did in Python when I was learning it and I offered to make it do the classified pruning, which became it's main function. Unfortunately, because of the way the site organized threads, it wouldn't always get every post on a given page of threads. I didn't realize that because it did the classified section fine, which makes sense given how shallow it was compared to the other sections. Although the number of posts isn't actually as high as it is reported. We (TTF) lost the ability long ago to reset those numbers, so that includes topics that were moved and deleted (which happened quite frequently with people trying to post a classified ad to the instruments section, for example).

I could point the scraper at the archive machine, but as you mentioned, even it didn't get everything and it was a proper webspider! So unfortunately, those posts are currently lost until they come back. If the site does come back and it has largely the same structure, I can do a full scrape of it. Heck, maybe even it'll have the "backup" feature re enabled! I saved the scripts that I used to copy them over, so it won't take 30 more hours of work to get them on there, I *should* just be able to import the new ones here in the event that happens.

Kudos to all those that got the old TTF info backed up and on to the new forum, no small feat! I realize that this is a late post in the thread, but I just got signed back up. I've been away on other boards on other instruments (I know, *shame*) and I thought I had signed up on TC long ago. Guess not, and with old TTF still out I tried again.