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Recovering old PMs on another discussion board
August 5, 2014 at 12:06 pm
So I was thinking the other day about a discussion board I used to be a member of and would PM quite a few members there, but they were very stingy about how many PMs you could save in your inbox so a lot of great messages (and messages that I would dearly like to have for reference now) ended up having to be deleted. Because, you know, I didn't know three years ago that I would want to save them for the future...
I've checked
waybackmachine but because my PMs are protected behind my login I can't access them and I don't know if they would archive PMs from discussion boards anyway.
I have a feeling this is a lost cause, but if anyone has any ideas about where I could look for information about how to do this that would be great!
Teenaged X-Files obsession + Bermuda Triangle episode + Self-led school research project = Atheist.
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RE: Recovering old PMs on another discussion board
August 5, 2014 at 1:09 pm
I suppose it's a long shot, but you could ask the site admin. I am assuming that they're using forum software that stores messages in a database, and deleted messages probably get purged regularly in order to keep the DB at a manageable size. But if they still have backups they might be able to help you, though the amount of work involved might not be worth it to them.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
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RE: Recovering old PMs on another discussion board
August 5, 2014 at 1:33 pm
(August 5, 2014 at 1:09 pm)Tonus Wrote: I suppose it's a long shot, but you could ask the site admin. I am assuming that they're using forum software that stores messages in a database, and deleted messages probably get purged regularly in order to keep the DB at a manageable size. But if they still have backups they might be able to help you, though the amount of work involved might not be worth it to them.
I think this whole endeavor is a long shot.
Stupid discussion forum that only lets you keep 30 PMs at a time...
Teenaged X-Files obsession + Bermuda Triangle episode + Self-led school research project = Atheist.
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RE: Recovering old PMs on another discussion board
August 5, 2014 at 1:44 pm
Yeah, the only way I can see is asking the site admins.
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RE: Recovering old PMs on another discussion board
August 5, 2014 at 4:16 pm
(August 5, 2014 at 2:16 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote: I belong to another forum that, when I joined, allowed ordinary members to store a whopping 5 private messages.
Speaking of, does AF have a PM limit? Should I start archiving my messages?
Teenaged X-Files obsession + Bermuda Triangle episode + Self-led school research project = Atheist.
