sup/tg/

[#] Culling and Server Move
10:08pm UTC - 5/30/2011

The server move finally has a hard deadline: July 1, 2011. I have to move sup/tg/ to a new provider by then or everything simply disappears into the ether. So that means it's time for a culling!

Like the last time, the archive is going to be purged of unwanted threads by whatever poor assholes I can rope into helping me a team of qualified, highly-trained content experts. What are the criteria, you ask? Wait, you didn't ask? WELL FUCK YOU I'M TELLING YOU ANYWAY:

Like before, the deleted threads will be moved to a graveyard where anyone who really wants that aforementioned horrible thread can still download it. (Image threads will not be given this treatment this time around. You knew better when you added it.) I will update this post or a future post with the growing list of graveyarded threads and links to download them.

When the culling is done, I will begin uploading threads by month to Dropbox, Megaupload, or whatever other service I can find as a failsafe. If I get hit by a bus, I don't want the archive to just disappear and lose the last four years' worth of amazing /tg/. I'll likely be moving to Varsbox unless someone else can suggest a good VPS provider that will fit the following criteria:

I'm going to get started on getting people to cull the archives. For those of you who give no shits either way, I've updated the archive page so that you can hide quest and draw threads now, so there's that.

Edit: For those of you helping me, I'd like you to go through a full month at a time (helped now by the handy dandy new archive page), and give me a list like the following:

Thread Number - Title - Score - Reason

You don't have to get fancy with the reason, just "quest thread" or something so I know why it should be removed. Remember, these are just recommendations; I may end up keeping a thread after all, though most of the time I'm sure the thread deserves to be eliminated. Please also include a separate list of just the thread numbers so I can plug them more easily into my tools. Extra lists of questionable items or threads to make into collections are also good.

Edit 2: Of the 6805 threads currently archived, 465 threads contain the tag 'draw' (drawfag, drawthread) and 2090 contain the tag 'quest'. That's right, a full 30% of the archive is composed of quest threads. ಠ_ಠ

Edit 3: 392 draw threads at a total of 3.8GB removed on the first pass. (Culled List) Also I guess I should clarify: I'm going to leave the "deleted" threads online until Friday or something, then they're permanently being deleted. The graveyard I'm going to leave for as long as I still have this server. I could leave Deleted and Graveyard together I guess but this gives me a directory to dump so I can get more disk space as I archive and transfer batches of threads.

Edit 4: Jesus Christ there were fucking 335 threads in May alone, 137 of which have "quest" in the tags. I need to look about changing the way threads get archived, or be extremely aggressive in future culls. Maybe something like deleting threads below 5 or 10 or something, or (ugh) requiring multiple votes to add a thread ala 4chanarchive.

Ultimate question: Should I ban quest threads, or just aggressively cull them?

Edit 5: Anon raised a good point that made me wonder: how long does Easymodo store threads? Do they have a purging policy or any of that? How far back does it go? Hell, it'd make my life massively easier if I just hosted a listing service for /tg/ that linked to archived threads on Easymodo. Would Eksopl mind? What does he use for a hosting provider, anyway? QUESTIONS, MAN.

If anyone could put me in touch with Eksopl so I can ask some questions about how he runs things over there, I'd be much obliged. Either I could just set the archive to link to Easymodo, or buy hosting from the same company.

~Lord Licorice

TRY AGAIN WITH A FRIEND

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Comments

1
01:12am UTC - 5/31/2011 [X]
well, this is awesome, in so many ways.


2 Shas'O Faiz
03:39am UTC - 5/31/2011 [X]
Suffer not the quest thread to live.


3 Temp
05:13am UTC - 5/31/2011 [X]
1. Loving the new archive sorting function.
2. Leave the quests, but consider adding a true/false button to the archiving form that designates it as a quest or not. Put the quests in a separately viewed section. Quests are a sizable portion of the thread count, but what's the actual amount of space they're taking up--particularly compared to drawthreads/imagedumps?


4 Self
06:20am UTC - 5/31/2011 [X]
I strongly vote in favor of keeping quest threads. They're fun for a great many people, and keeping them allows someone who might have missed one or two installments because of work or whatever (or simple latecomers) to catch up and participate. Thinking longer-term, even once a quest thread is over, there's still a strong appeal in going into the archives and reading the story that was told. The truly legendary ones have even become a part of the board's history, and isn't the preservation of the best, most fun, and most interesting parts of that history the entire point of making an archive?


5 Self
06:26am UTC - 5/31/2011 [X]
I should add that I don't mean keep ALL of them. Like you say, the ones that only got one or two installments, the ones with no votes, and the ones with no interest should be purged in a reasonable period of time. I just ask that you not put a universal ban on new ones.


6
06:35am UTC - 5/31/2011 [X]
Well aren't the quests logged on easymodo or something as well, and if the questers really enjoyed the quest I don't see why they shouldn't spend some time summarizing and posting them to 1d4chan


7
07:00am UTC - 5/31/2011 [X]
That criticism can be applied to anyone who liked a thread.


8
07:36am UTC - 5/31/2011 [X]
@ 6: Easymodo is also a pain in the ass to find things on these days, even if you know exact phrases from the thread you're seeking. I find it really tiring to see some posters' constant claims that easymodo is good enough for all archive-worthy threads--it's not. Sup/tg/ is the best option as the go-to for threads that people know they will wish to reference easily at a later date. (Whether that's system building, hilarious commentary, original content or quests, obviously varies from person to person.)


9
10:09am UTC - 5/31/2011 [X]
Maybe we should leave the current system and purge threads that don't get enough views/upvotes after X period of time (a month sounds nice)? And let the mods save threads from dying if they are considered worthy.

Quest threads at 30%? Seems like a LOT more.

Maybe some of the "That guy" threads should be culled. I mean, they're definitely worth keeping around as a category, but we've done it so much that we don't exactly have the best material anymore.

Also, could the threads that used to be here (http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/reading.html) get stuck in the main archive? They were good threads as I recall. Same with all the 404s across the site, think they could be cleaned up or had their original functionality restored?


10
10:49am UTC - 5/31/2011 [X]
Something else that needs addressing: we need a max character limit for the description box. The retard that archives Binder quest writes a fucking novel each time. You can see each time he's archived something because it fills the space normally taken by like 5+ other threads.


11
11:22am UTC - 5/31/2011 [X]
The popularity of quest threads is its own argument against banning quests. If they were unwanted, they would be unarchived. If sup/tg/ is about keeping the threads that /tg/ considers worthwhile, why would a large segment of those be disallowed?

Another quest that goes with this is: When does a type of thread become "too much"? For instance, if you use the handy new feature to hide all the drawthreads and quest threads, you'll see the recently archived threads are dominated by Deathwatch stat generation and space marine chapter homebrew. If 40k isn't relevant to your interests, you might think that what is only arguably original content (rolling stats with a published system straight up isn't OC--and if quests aren't OC, why would 10 threads on a single chapter be?) is a blight upon the archive.

My answer to that is that what is of interest enough to archive and upvote should remain, because it's what we'll care about enough to revisit down the road. Whether it's homebrew/quests/memes/etc is irrelevant. Laying down a minimum vote count for threads to not be purged after a set time is fine--but extend it to everything. There's plenty of non-quest threads that don't garner enough interest for more than a vote or 2, that will never get revisited and are just taking up space.


12
06:23pm UTC - 5/31/2011 [X]
Quest threads probably need to be kept seperate from non-quest threads, if they're kept at all.


13
08:30pm UTC - 5/31/2011 [X]
You could try either a) culling all suggestions from quests and only including the quest updates themselves, then putting them all into one big document or b) mashing them together in a horrific multi-page abomination. You could also, say, disallow text quests. They're fucking massive and tend to spam threads all over the archive, with little real quality.


14
09:33pm UTC - 5/31/2011 [X]
Keep quest threads if they are like 10+ votes or are a long series, e.g. more than 10 quests. The Zerg quest is epic and should be kept.


15
12:01am UTC - 6/01/2011 [X]
@ 13: With a large number of quests, removing the suggestion posts would make them barely comprehensible. I'd say that overall, text quests have a higher quality than draw quests. /tg/ has some excellent writefags, but our drawfags tend to not be able to write a story worth a damn.


16 Lord Licorice
05:01am UTC - 6/01/2011 [X]
@9: I keep forgetting those are in there. I really should add them to the formal archive, I just keep forgetting.

@10: Yeah, I'll see about putting a limit. textarea fields don't have a maxlength attribute so I'm going to have to put javascript in there. 120 characters is probably more than enough.

@11: The problem is that people seem to archive every quest thread regardless of merit, and they're difficult to know when to cull. It's a bad idea to discourage people from adding quests, because they might turn out awesome and we'd lose the first entries; on the other hand, we then have a shitload of orphaned or low-quality quests to sift through. A number of quests also fall into the "people had fun while they were participating but there's no reason to go back to them afterward" problem. Are we archiving them because they're fun to read for others at a later date, or are they archived for the participants' nostalgia?

It's a fine line and not something I think actually has an answer, other than regular evaluations and cullings. I want to cut down on shit threads, but no one's psychic. Finalizing a minimum vote count and auto-graveyarding poorly-received threads after 30 days may also be the answer (except where quests that peter out toward the end fall under the threshold but should be kept for completeness' sake argh fuck why is this so hard).

@13: People should be doing that anyway (not just quests, any real content, like game design) and putting the finished products on 1d4chan.


17
06:38pm UTC - 6/02/2011 [X]
It might be worth considering adding an extra feature for quests and multi-part threads. I know there's tags already, but I mean something where the archive entry would say "This thread is part of series XYZ", and you could display all threads in the series and such. And then if a series hasn't had a new installment in a month, and doesn't have enough votes on average, it goes bye-bye.


18
08:44am UTC - 6/03/2011 [X]
There's value in quest threads, and at present suptg is the accepted way to preserve that value, but it's hard to say whether that's an effect or a cause. Right now people are cautious and preemptively archive what could turn out to be great quests and usually don't. Some kind of policy on not archiving the first few installments would make sense, people will find their own ways to record them - but that's probably going to mean saving them as images, that you'll end up archiving anyway when they get posted in subsequent threads.

And because it doesn't get said often enough, thank you for running what is essentially the collective memory of /tg/. It wouldn't be the same place, at all, without this site.


19
06:12pm UTC - 6/03/2011 [X]
What makes easymodo painful to use as a reference is that it doesn't save images, only thumbs.

Unless I am an idiot or something on this regard



20 Rarghl
08:45pm UTC - 6/03/2011 [X]
SO GLAD that quest threads are going away - the new pulldown to filter them out is GREAT. Kind of a double-edged sword, though, because the drawthreads are pretty great sometimes.


21 Abdul Alhazred, the Mad Arab
02:29am UTC - 6/04/2011 [X]
Maybe adding a static list of tags that one can use with a "request a new type of tag" feature would help with indexing?


22
03:29am UTC - 6/04/2011 [X]
@ Rarghl: The drawthreads have no lasting reason to stay archived, unlike quests. If there was a temporary "drawthread filled requests" page that the pics could be uploaded to for a week, we'd not see drawthreads archived at all.


23
05:35pm UTC - 6/04/2011 [X]
@22 I think that you could argue that nothing actually has a lasting reason to be archived, just based on the fact that most stuff doesn't get looked at that often. Hell, Ruby Quest, one of the more popular quests, I have never looked at the suptg archives for, and have just glanced at the 1d4chan page randomly.

Largly, the suptg archiving system ensures that all of a thread would be saved for people, and given that a good chunk of that content is images that are not easy to find due to either being original content or not being in the various japanese booru systems. While it is true that easymodo does do the whole of a thread thing, it doesn't save images, only thumbs, and I really hate having to post thumbs on /tg/ in an attempt to get the full images.

It's just painful.


24
07:48pm UTC - 6/08/2011 [X]
Most of the time i'm on suptg is spent reading quest thread seeing as i barely frequent tg itself, that said i do aggree that there are way too many orphaned quest and quests that end abruptly.


25 MrTT
07:11am UTC - 6/12/2011 [X]
It would be great if there was the option to hide everything except quest threads. They are the only thing I feel is worthwhile to look up in the archives.

And culling based on category (quest, etc) is closed minded and flat out stupid, it should be done entirely on score.
I think dropping to -4 or lower for a week qualifies for deletion. Don't single out any category for culling just because you personally don't like it. If people don't like it then downvote it.

Culling quests of posts by anyone other then the author will make them impossible to read because the vast majority of authors do not actually quote things, they make vague references or even list the post number of someone then reply to what they said rather then reposting the text.


26 PurpleXVI
01:03am UTC - 6/15/2011 [X]
"And culling based on category (quest, etc) is closed minded and flat out stupid, it should be done entirely on score.
I think dropping to -4 or lower for a week qualifies for deletion. Don't single out any category for culling just because you personally don't like it. If people don't like it then downvote it."

Alright, let me just address this so LL doesn't have to.

There are threads in the archives with 30+ votes that are basically dickgirl rapefics or shitty, shitty imagedumps. They're rare, but they happen. And what if a single installment of a quest gets a -8 because someone decides to shit on it, we should just excise that rabidly, then?

No, that's stupid.

As for killing specific categories, like drawthreads and imagedumps: Tough titties. Those things have the least memorable content and take up the most space comparably.

Same goes for threads that are ONE funny post by the OP and then a pile of trash by everyone afterwards. Noise to signal ratio, if it's mostly shit, it goes. Sure, votes help point us towards things that definitely need to go or be kept, but they're guidelines.


27 MrTT
12:23am UTC - 6/24/2011 [X]
If it takes one guy deciding to shit on a thread to get to -8 then the voting system is broken as hell.
And I did point out the week grace period (for people to notice such an attempt and counteract it).

As for 30+ positive votes on dickgirl rapefics... thats horribly disturbing, but presents a false dichotomy.. the fact is, it is super popular. So it should not be automatically removed by a bot. A mod can remove it manually for being objectionable content though.

As for killing imagedumps and drawthreads... go ahead, I explicitly gave an example being quests, cause many people are going on about how all quests should be deleted. Image dumps and drawthreads take tons of space so there is a legitimate reason to target them. Also when I said "content type" I didn't mean "text vs images" I meant "quest / worldbuilding / online D&D game / fanfic / etc".

It was brought about by all the very specific calls for "delete all quests".


 

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