Looking for Eileen's old posts?

[Pig]

Hello all,

Some of your might remember me -- I'm Kate, Eileen Wharmby's daughter. I'm so happy the Lounge is still here. Mum would be happy, too.

I have a question: I've been looking for Mum's old forum posts, and have pulled up some under the username WSEileen on AskWoody. I feel like there are some missing, though. I know there was a merge of Woody's Lounge with AskWoody in 2019, is that right? Are all the old Woody's Lounge forum posts still up on AskWoody, or should I be looking somewhere else? Did Mum ever post as just "Eileen?" I remember her posting an official "resignation" message when her health became too bad for her to continue as an admin, but I'm not seeing that message in the search results on AskWoody.

Any help any of you could give me would be fantastic. I should really save all these posts myself, but I like looking on the Internet and seeing her still out there. It makes it seem like she's still here somehow.

Thanks so much.

[HansV]

Hi Kate, nice to see you here!
Woody's Lounge became the Windows Secrets Lounge in 2009. We founded Eileen's Lounge the next year.
The WIndows Secrets Lounge was indeed merged with the AskWoody forums in 2019. In between, it moved to different servers and software several times. Each time, some posts were lost, or severely mangled, especially posts from the early years.
Your mother retired as admin in 2002 or 2003, so it's not surprising that many of her posts are missing.
Her resignation message may have been in one of the private forums that only admins and moderators could see.

If you have lots of time, you could browse through the WOPR site on the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/*;type=text/wopr.com/*. But it's difficult to find specific posts there.

[Leif]

Hi Kate,

I've managed to find a post that appears to be dated April 2004:
IMPORTANT - read and do - NOW!
but as the replies are dated 2002, I suspect that something got mangled.

Pity my admin login doesn't work anymore...

[JoeP]

The "WS" was prepended to the Windows Secrets user accounts when they were merged into the AskWoody forum. All of the posts at Windows Secrets were attempted to be moved to AskWoody. IIRC, there were problems with at least one of the backup copies used in the process and some posts were lost. The vast majority were retained. So, Eileen's posts that are available at AskWoody should be under WSEileen.

[HansV]

Thanks, Joe!

[Pig]

Thanks, all! It's good to know that I'm not just remembering things wrong and that there *were* more posts! Maybe I'll have a dig around in the WayBack Machine...

[DocAElstein]

Hi Kate,
When I first saw this post, my immediate thought was to recommend you to the WayBack Machine at the archive org site, as that site has been a gold mine for me since I stumbled over it. But I held back, as I expected someone here would probably mention it and have a much better idea of what you should search for, and/or know of, or find, a post or two, since I know most of the regulars here have some history with the precursors of Eileen's Lounge.

Now the smart people have told you the important stuff, I can tell you some other things now from my experience with archive org and it’s web WayBack Machine
_(i) Finding stuff at archive org can be very varied and hit and miss.
For example you might look at a particular offered link, which offers you many dated captures of that link
The final captures you look at may be similar, and have a URL link which you might think could take you further to something you want. But many times those URL links will not work to get you what they may have originally. However once in a while they do. There seems to be no logic to it. Once somebody was convinced a captured page never took them as far as they needed to go "down" the link chain to find something. So I overdosed on coffee, and scrutinizingly checked every dated capture and found one that took me a few levels down, (following one link after the other) , and finally even a link worked to a download file he had wanted! So it can be just like digging for gold. However, I fear that characteristically a capture of a forum page is less likely to exhibit this multi level tunnelling down the URLs possibility. That is what I have found generally and from a quick look at some captured Woody's Lounge pages it looks similar– in other in simple terms, the links on a captured page are most likely not to work for you.
But all is not lost…
_(ii) ….you can sometimes get a bit further with a bit of investigation and intuition, (especially if you may have some idea of a word or two that might have been in a URL link to something with your mum in it, or what particular sub forum she may have most often posted in).
For example, after a bit of random clicking on some of the 10000 links you might get an index page, (or you yourself might recognise such a link). Although the links may not work there, you could copy the link ( by right clicking and selecting Copy link address
Paste that somewhere like a text file or in word, and take a look at it. Here for example that top Announcements Words From Onn High link is this
https://web.archive.org/web/20061109162813/http://www.wopr.com/cgi-bin/w3t/postlist.pl?Cat=&Board=ann
I am thinking your mum would have been posting in that top announcements place and a bit of an intuitive guess is then I might be looking for a link with Board=ann in it. I will make a note of that, or rather, I will make a note of
ard=ann.
**Why I do that will be clear later.
A similar bit of intuition, and quick looking around a few of the 10000 links, suggests to me I might be interested in a link that also has thread in it

Ok, so far so good.

Now, first, use that "wild card link" Hans gave, and then put these 2 search words, thread and ard=ann , in that box top right like this
https://i.postimg.cc/KzdgHCcT/wild-card ... -right.jpg

wild card link & thread ard=ann in searxch box top right.JPG

That reduces me down to just 32 links from the ( more than ) 10000, and it seems you mostly only have 1 dated capture to look at for each one, ( for example, just 1 dated captured of Lief - the Gifmeister…. )


In those 32 links, quite a few have posts from your mum in them, and about the third I found with your mum in it, was the thread Leif found. ( - and you can see that in that link Lief gave there is the Board=ann bit. So my investigatory intuitively autistically lateral thinking guess got that right. But the rest of the link is a bit different.

Code: Select all

Lief found –       https://web.archive.org/web/20040815234226/http://www.wopr.com/cgi-bin/w3t/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=ann&Number=163016&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=0&fpart=
I found -          https://web.archive.org/web/20041107214538/http://www.wopr.com:80/cgi-bin/w3t/printthread.pl?Cat=&Board=ann&main=163016&type=thread

Maybe if I thought about that for a while, it might give me some other ideas. Like if you had that number 163016, it could have helped


**It seems the search terms up top right must not be too long, (and each search term bit needs to be separated by a space, I think …. ), I am not sure of the limit. - …….
In fact I think I have only scratched the surface of the search possibilities at that web archive org place. I don’t know too much more. After seeing that "wild card link" thing that Hans gave, I think I will go and post a question about all that over at the Web Development place

_.___________________________________________________

Of course, alternatively, to be sure, you can just go through all those ( more than ) 10000 links resulting from Hans suggested "wild card link" thing . Bearing in mind that some of those may give you many dated captures, then as long as you have provisions for a year’s Gold digging, you will be OK, Lol! - I once spent best part of 2 weeks going through a few hundred from a search which got me about a dozen links, which then in turn, themselves had about 50 different date captures to go through!! ( They were download links, - I had to go through, risk infecting my computer with the naughty stuff that most of them had, before I found the few legitimate ones, Lol . ( From my experience I would not rely on what you often read about a download having to be kosher because it’s from web archive. Or maybe I should have not had access to them. So I will ask shortly, over at the Web Development place ) ).

Alan


P.S. 1 I really like the smilies here. I think someone mentioned to me some time ago, that some of them may have originated somehow from your mum? ( Edit: I see she did... https://eileenslounge.com/viewtopic.php ... 487#p87487 )

Edit P.S. 2 here I just posted to try and get some more info about the search possibilities at that web archive org Wayback machine place
https://eileenslounge.com/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=40890

[Pig]

Alan, thank you so much for this deep dive!! I really appreciate it! And thank you for posting to get more info about it! I'll check that thread now...

[DocAElstein]

You're welcome, it also all helped me to get a bit better clued up on that archive place. I had been a bit confused about a few things and everything is slowly falling into place now.

[hlewton]

This is interesting. I was not using AskWoody forums for quite some time and still don't very often. However, I too found that WS proceeded my user name. I ask the admin there if the WS could be removed and have my original userdid returned. I was told it was possible but there could be posts that could come up missing. I keep the WS and did find all my posts still intact. It's a shame you are having trouble finding all your mother's posts. I wish you the best of luck. By the way Pig, it's nice to meet you.