GEN-MEDIEVAL-L Archives

Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 2000-03 > 0952063107


From: Don Stone <>
Subject: Re: archives at deja.com
Date: Fri, 03 Mar 2000 00:58:27 -0500


Stewart Baldwin wrote:
>
> Yesterday, I was looking for an old (1995) posting at Dejanews
> (http://www.deja.com), and found that they had altered their interface
> (again). Another change was more disturbing. I could not find the
> 1995 article. I then tried doing a search, using the old e-mail
> addresses I used to post from, and found that the earliest messages of
> mine that were available at Dejanews were from January 1996. (I have
> been posting messages on a frequent basis since this newsgroup started
> in mid-1995.) I was unable to get any messages from s.g.m from before
> that date. Thus, unless they have moved these messages to another
> archive that is accessed in a different way, it looks like there is a
> good chance that these older postings will no longer be available on
> dejanews. I was still able to find the posting I wanted in the
> Rootsweb archives, but this brings up another problem. To a large
> extent, the Rootsweb archives and Dejanews have duplicate archives of
> the old s.g.m messages, but that is not the case for the period some
> time back when the gating between the newsgroup and the mailing list
> was not working properly. If it is going to be the policy of Dejanews
> to discard old postings before a certain date, then they will
> eventually discard postings from the period when gating was bad. Is
> there any plan in progress to recover those messages that didn't make
> it into the Rootsweb archives before they are lost?

First, some ancient history. Late in 1994 Todd Farmerie suggested in
soc.genealogy.misc that a medieval genealogy newsgroup be created. (At
that time soc.genealogy.misc included a number of posts about medieval
genealogy, intermixed with many other kinds of genealogical posts which
didn't fit into any other newsgroup.) Todd wrote the first draft of the
proposal, officially called a Request for Discussion (RFD). Because of
uncertainty about his internet account, Todd could not follow through as
proponent (formal proposer), and I volunteered to take on that
responsibility. Soc.genealogy.medieval was created in June 1995, after
going through the standard processes of RFD and CFV (Call for Votes).
At essentially the same time the mailing list GEN-MEDIEVAL-L, hosted by
Apple Computer's eWorld, was started. There was some initial confusion
about how to implement the gating, but after a short while that was
resolved, and the newsgroup and mailing list were gated at American
University. The mailing list archives began at this time also.

The gating was pretty reliable for almost two years. (Thus the loss of
1995 posts by deja.com is not that serious; these posts should appear in
the GEN-MEDIEVAL archives.) Then, perhaps because American University
took on more gating than it could efficiently implement, there was some
deterioration, with some posts to soc.genealogy.medieval not getting to
GEN-MEDIEVAL or vice versa. (Thus, for this period, roughly 1997 plus
most of January 1998, both the GEN-MEDIEVAL archives and the
soc.genealogy.medieval archives at deja.com [or elsewhere] should be
searched.) On 24 Jan. 1998 the gating was taken over by RootsWeb, which
was at this point hosting the mailing list. Gating has been pretty
reliable since then. (Thus, for the period after 24 Jan 1998, either
the GEN-MEDIEVAL archives or the soc.genealogy.medieval archives should
be consulted, since they both have essentially the same set of posts.)

I don't think that deja.com has a policy of deleting postings greater
than a certain age. I believe that the loss of most of the 1995
soc.genealogy.medieval postings there was the result of a screw-up
rather than a policy.

-- Don Stone

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