The Genii Forum

Since July The Genii Forum has gathered nearly 900 members. Not to mention hundreds, maybe thousands, of posts!

It's come to my attention that many of the older posts might not be necessary any more.

Would you all like me to keep these older files? In the event you wanted to search for something. Or, should I go ahead an delete them?

I was going to delete everything more than 45 days old.

I'd be interested in hearing the voice of the forum.

-Brad

Don't delete them! Think about new people coming to the board. You will deprive them of seeing some great information. Perhaps just sweeping up some might help (selectively deleting posts with little magical information).

This reminds me of a funny little story attributed to the famous film producer, Samuel Goldwyn (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer).

His accountant telephoned him one day: "Mr. Goldwyn, our office is overflowing with piles of your financial paperwork! Do we have your permission to destroy everything that is over six years old?"

Goldwyn's reply: "Of course you can, just be sure you keep a copy of it all."

Love those Goldwynisms.

My personal vote is to wipe off everything that has had either one, two, or no replies.
Longer threads that are out of date (such as questions about when a certain month's issue is received) should be wiped.
Other opinions?

This, too, can be done. Any of the messages that are left can be put in the "Genii Archives" category.

-brad

Richard said:

Longer threads that are out of date (such as questions about when a certain month's issue is received) should be wiped.
===================================

Definitely.

threads that related to an event or issue past can cetainly be deleted along with threads that nobody replied to. Some of the longer ones have very interesting discussions and it would be a shame to delete those.

There are topics on this board so valuable it would be a crime to delete. The Ricky Jay topic, for one, the Asher Twist topic for another. Even the Lotion topic has tremendous value. Take Richard's advice and delete only those with 1, 2, or maybe three posts. Leave everything else alone. Please!!!

I think it is important to keep everything intact for future research and those that are simply interested in reading the thoughts and whims of the participants in the Genii Forum.

I have always had this fear of the electronic media of being wiped out without any hard copy or a back-up. Deleting these posts is akin to burning books. I say we keep everything.

I do however have a concern to the publishers of this electronic forum. There is expense involved. But I should not have brought that up, because that will eventually lead to taxation without representation, or in the vernacular, a subscription fee.

MAGIC that was hosted by David Lichtman in the 90's is still available on the web for those that have a desire to read the posts. I think Tabby Crabb and Biro have the record amount of entries, for whatever that is worth. But what it is worth, these postings have meanings.

Sometimes it is important to re-read postings a second and even a third time to fully understand the jist.

Remembering the quote of Andr Gide, "To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company.

I agree with Geno.

I just signed up last week and I had a good time reading all the "old" articles, esp. on Asher Twist, Ricky Jay, Harry Lorayne, etc.

On the other hand, I didn't care about those post with no replies.

Very interesting question.

Think about it. Relatively speaking, we are dealing with a new way to communicate and archive information. This is information in a format that consists of a continuously growing animal. Very much like a growing child.

This e-child is "alive" in many ways. For instance, it reacts to things that happen around it, and then goes off (maybe just briefly) in that direction, as if to explore. One sniff of Blaine and this curious little child is frenzied as if having taken to the red cordial.

We've watched this child grow from infancy. It's now finding its feet. His real future is ahead.

This forum has just begun its life. It has not even reached puberty and we are already discussing throwing little bits and pieces away! (I know, the biggger pieces are yet to develop.) But selective deletions at this point is paramount to disposing of pictures from a your child's photo album. One day, it will be regretted.

The information that is deleted forms part of the record. The fact that several topics received NO REPLIES tells us something. We need to keep warts, and all.

Only this way, will our child's real persona be archived for future enjoyment.

At least burn the entire archive to CDRom before any deletions. Freeze a snapshot of the child in plastic.

Cheers

Ben Harris

Deleting post that had no replies or 1 reply could be a bad thing. Firstly, I'll probably never get the book I asked for in the Wanted Section (hint hint), and secondly, perhaps it was a question that got a great answer in one post. Something like "Can someone help with with the Flintstone Coin Clip"? And the reply might point right to the source for learning it. Delete it and you'll only end up with the same question 2 months from now, and all of you will be answering the same questions all the time.

Dated stuff goes. Once an event happens, no point in leaving it, unless it is of historical significance. Items such as "so and so passed away" should be left, but items like "David Blaine on t.v. tonight at 7:30" need to go.

What do I know? I'm still working on the Flintstone Coin Clip.

I'll be quite now.

Hey, what kind of coins fit into a Flinstone Coin Clip ... Rubbles! HAHAHAAAHHHAHAH

touche' Richard !! Nicely done.

I'm weighing in with the packrats. Keep everything, at least in storage media. A lot of the irrelevant flotsam in turn-of-the-(20th)-century magic publications is great fun to browse through and potentially of unexpected historical value. Same now. Including the single-post and have-you-received-your-issue threads.

The dicier question is how to triage out what to make available for ongoing instant on-line access. I'm afraid I don't have a useful suggestion on that. Perhaps older forums, magic or otherwise, can provide useful models.

I completely agree with keeping everything, except may be incidental posts, but to search for them will probably harder than keeping everything.

Somebody suggested that items like "David Blaine on t.v. tonight at 7:30" should be deleted. What about deleting David Blaine too? :p

Being a pack-rat who seldom throws away anything, including scraps of papers and arcane notes on the inside of gum-wrappers, I'm in favor of archiving EVERYTHING...

However...

It would be nice to store a year's worth of messages on a CD-ROM, which is something I do and the EG does...Otherwise, one has to eventually (in a few years) navigate through tens of thousands of messages...

Onward...

Racherbaumer

I suggest we delete this thread only :)

There are good arguments for and against. I think I'd lean toward the selective wiping of uninformative posts.

As someone said earlier, one or two reply posts CAN be very informative, no more replies have been neccesary because the required information has been given.

Paul.

Is a forum still a forum once it has been selectively edited? Surely, what remains is a new beast, a shadow of the original preened to suit the editor.

As with audio compression (MP3 sucks) many the nuances, timbre and details are lost in the rush to save space.

Tongue partially in cheek,

Ben Harris

The real question is what do you want this Forum to be?

Keeping everything certainly is good for the historical record. But finding something useful will get harder and harder the more information and disinformation which is added to it. This means that the search capability and the archiving method has to be improved, maybe not now, but definitely in the future.

Ideally one would prepare two versions. One as is without any changes what-so-ever. This is for the historians. So that one can go back and say ah look this guy posted again a disguised add for his ebook shop Lybrary.com.

And a second version which is heavily moderated and rearranged into topical groups to preserver useful information. Pruning the information tree is essential if one wants to find anything useful in the future. Remember, searching for something only works if you know what to search for. A lot of information is found by browsing. Particularly for the newcomer. It is therefore vital to have a well designed tree of categories.

Concerning the suggestion that Jon made, preparing a CD: I would be glad to help or lend my experience. The reader technology I developed might be one possible way to have a fully searchable record. A real database would be another.

Chris.... Lybrary.com preserving magic one book at a time.

Here are my 3 cents worth...

Keep the posts (at least for the next year or so) and add them to the Archives. I just checked and there are only 6 topics in the archives so there is plenty of room ;)

It might be nice to have the Archived posts downloadable. I just added a 100 gig HD to my PC and need something to take up some of the space :)

Best...Mark

When I click on the "Magicana" section of the forum, only one topis shows up, The Cetner Deal. It has been this way for at least a month. Is something wrong, or perhaps there have simply been no new topics in that section? Then again, what about the old ones? Have they been removed?